Simultaneous use of multiple tape devices

[Ourcup]

Hi there,

We have a friday/weekly backup of about half a terabyte running onto 5 tapes.
The Data and Exchange (IS 85GB & Brick 45GB) are split into two separate jobs (with 2 associated device groups - 3tapes for data/2 for exchange)
The trouble is the Brick level backup alone takes upto 21 hours (@40MB/min)
The only way we have managed to use both tape devices simultaneously is to place both jobs on hold and start manually AFTER the scheduled time. When the jobs are left to run automatically as scheduled (both at exactly the same time) they run one after the other and of course the backup is still running come Monday (and that's if there are no errors, 'unable to find a blank media' is a real pain on this site!)

How to use both drives automatically?
Cheers,
Neil

P.S. Only one drive is used at a time if trying to format two tapes, however each tape does get formatted in a different drive!

P.P.S The Exchange diffential backup is actually a FULL backup and takes just as long. this now means we are running backups over 24 hours with no restore window - i.e. we have to cancel the brick diff to do a restore. Purchasing a dedicated restore drive appears to be out of the question (bean counters seem incapable of costing the man hours wasted)
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HP C7200 Library (20 slot)
Firmware Revision: 1520 (10/03/2002)

HP Ultrium 1-SCSI (LTO)
HP Ultrium 1-SCSI (LTO)
Firmware Revision: E31R/OEM2 (07/08/2002)

Compaq 64bit/66Mhz Dual Channel Wide Ultra3 SCSI Adapter

ARCserve 2000 SP4 +
DeviceSP.exe (Q031854-16/12/2002)
QO20824 (After Crash, Previous running jobs show active- ASCORE.DLL - 15/5/2002)

QO23827 savcfg.dll 12/08/2002
(Backup jobs may hang when user schedules multiple backup jobs to run simultaneously, and the entire local node is selected for backup.)

QO27928 astask.dll 27/8/2002 (Custom Scheduled Job cannot append to tape)

QO19666 aslog.dll 22/5/2002(During a long backup, asrunjob.exe may fail, because it ran out of handles)

QO27941 asbackup 18/9/2002 (ARCserve cannot recognise new media)

QO22840 Dbaxchg2.dll 24/6/2002 (Exchange cumulative brick level update)

 

[speshalyst]

HI,

Create 2 device groups...

Assign 1 tape unit to each.

submit the jobs to seperate device groups.

cheers
speshalyst

So it Shall be Written!
So it Shall be Done!!

 

[CokeandSushi]

I also am having this problem and have logged it under the HP side of things on Tek-Tips.

Thanks for this speshalyst. Question does this then mean the job must be spilt in half with half going to one group and the other half of the job going to another group?

 

[Ourcup]

Thanks for that.
We do have separate device configuration groups with specific tapes allocated to the different jobs (Exchange/Data)- but have not specifically allocated each tape device to certain groups - unfortunately the monday job is still running at the moment but I should be able to check the config this afternoon.
Thanks again,
Neil

 

[mohamdr]

Hi
Run device configuration and create a virtual library, if you have 2 tape drives in your tape library then using this option will create 2 virtual tape library inside your tape Library, in this case you can n 2 jobs at the same time since each tape drive belong to different virtual library.

Hope this help

Regards
Mohamdr

 

[grantstonard]

IS there a way to have one backup job submitted to multiple tape drives ?

 

[ajtmcse]

Arcserve 2000 and Arcserve 9 DO NOT support a single job streaming to multiple tape drives. (Exception: RAID option).

The BrightStor Enterprise Backup product does allow you to create 1 backup job and assign as many tape drives as you wish to perform the backup. (i.e. C: goes to drive 1, D goes to drive 2, Exchange DB goes to drive 3.....)

-Tony