Veritas 9.1 Backup-To-Disk is Not Appendable 1

[Thishandleisnotinuse]

Hello all!

I have an external 300gig HD that I am using in conjunction with our Tape backup. I cannot get the backup-to-disk folder to append the jobs. They always overwrite. In media management the backup to folder sets are listed as Not Appendable.

Am I doing something wrong or is this by design?

Thanks!!!!

 

[justin2000]

What overwrite protection and append period have you got for your media sets?

What are you telling your jobs to do? Overwrite, or append, if none available, overwrite?

 

[Thishandleisnotinuse]

Overwrite Proetction Period is set to 1 hours and I have an ifinitie append time on the set. I would like to add that this is the second installation where I am doing something like this and I am getting the same results. The B2D sets are marked as not appendable.

My job is set to append to media, overwrite if not appendable media is available.

Thanks!!

 

[stevet3]

So your overwrite protecting the tapes for 1 hour. So after a job runs...and lets say your backing up 9.5 gigs. Backup Exec by default will create 9 1gig files and another with half gig in your physical backup folder location. At that point your "bkf" files or "media - AKA tapes" are being overwrite protected for 1hr but always appendable. 9 of the media will be mark not overwritable for 1 hr and not appendable. 1 media will be appendable and thats the half gig file. Reason: You have to look at the 1gig files as tapes...which they are considered. When tapes are full - they are not appendable...period...nothing to append to. The last file it creates is only half full out of the 1gb tape/media. So its appendable. So if you ran a job let say 5 mins after the previous job then that last bkf file will be appened to and then backup exec will start creating media or bkf files on the fly after. So lets say you wait 1 hr and 10 mins after that first job. The media then will turn blue or overwritable and become recycled media. If you run another job...backup exec will create 10 more files, etc. Ideally you want to change your media management to use recycled media before scratch. When it comes to backup to disk it will create the media as it goes along and can eventualy fill up the drive if you dont have the media sets setup correctly and media management. Reference

http://seer.support.veritas.com/docs/248751.htm

 

[Thishandleisnotinuse]

Ok So I see what you are saying. My B2D sets are indeed 1GB in size so veritas treats them as 1GB tapes. When the .bkf file reaches 1GB it makes a new one and keeps on backing up to the newly created file.

But It scares me when it says Overwriting Allocated Media B2D000108. Obviously That file contains backup info from some previous backup. If it overwrites it, then I won't be able to restore from it.

I thought it would append forever, then when the disk became full, it would overwrite the whole thing and start over. That's what I want to acheive.

Thanks alot!!!

 

[stevet3]

If its ovewriting the bkf then you need to change that overwrite protection. So for example in you case you backup to disk M-F @ 50gigs a day = 250gigs week. This will leave enough breathing room on your 300gig drive. I would set the overwrite period for for 6 days. Set the M-F job for overwrite only. If you had a blank backup to disk folder Mondays job would create 50 bkf files and then overwrite protected them until the following Sunday...So when the next monday rolls around the same 50 bkf files overwrite protection have expired and Backup Exec will re-use the files, etc.

 

[Thishandleisnotinuse]

Sorry to be such a pain in the butt, but why does it insist on overwriting the same .bkf files? Why doesn't it just create new ones on the fly. This would be the same purpose as appending. Instead of lets say Veritas creating 10 1GB files and then reusing them, why doesn't it just keep creating new .bkf files until it runs out of space, THEN start overwriting the ones already created?

Thanks for your input!!

 

[stevet3]

When you fill up the pyhsical disk Backup Exec will error out and will not run the jobs. Basically it will report no more space on the storage medium. There is not function in Backup Exec to say when it fills up the backup to disk location to start overwriting the exsiting files. This is all controlled by the media sets and jobs. Remember..you have to look at the bkf files as tapes. So if this were tape...almost the same principle...tape fills up and then your prompted for more media..if not tape is avail or times out then job failes.. if its a single tape drive. Exception is that backup exec with backup to disk folder will not perform that. It will error when your 300gig drive is full, thats why you need to setup the media sets and jobs to prune or overwrite the files after a specified period.