Full and incremental with "files to tape" jobs

[joerg.hermanns]

Forgive me if this is a stupid question ... i really am not excactly clear about this after reading the documentation.
If i do a backup to tape job for files and schedule that to run once a week, then my impression is that:

- FULL backup means that ALL files will be backed up in that directory regardless if already backed-up or not
- INCREMENTAL backup means that ALL files will be backup in that directory which are new or have changed since the last (FULL / INCREMENTAL??) backup

Is this correct?

So, if i have a repository which holds "backup copy" files which are created over the week (which then are mostly VBK files when GFS retention has worked) and backup this
- ONCE manual with a FULL backup
- EVERY WEEK automatically with INCREMENTAL backup
and tell the job to export the Media-set once a week (next day after backup?) ...
Will i then have a weekly backup including only all NEW full backups created during that week?
So to say a "WEEKLY" GFS backup - where i do the "GFS" part just manually by loading the right tapes (hopefully)

[veremin]

Is this correct?

Correct.

Will i then have a weekly backup including only all NEW full backups created during that week?

The problem is that once the specified retention is reached, backup copy job starts transforming on daily basis. So to say, the oldest restore point (full backup, .vbk) will be moved forward once a day. From perspective of files to tape job, it will be completely new full backup that has to be copied to tape mediums.

So, weekly mediaset will contain about 7 full backups, plus, 7 increments that must be transformed in order to set reference to newly-moved full backups, plus, weekly GFS points. Not sure whether it is something you're after.

Thanks.

[joerg.hermanns]

Hi Vladimir,

no thats not what i am after ... Actually i want to achieve that i will have a tape backup that contains one fullbackup of every machine within that week.
So to say likely a "weekly" backup from a GFS perspective. We then could do the "rest" of GFS manually by just labelling the tapes correctly.
(And maybe move them manually to a specific pool.
Or do we have other possiblities ? Better ones maybe ?

Regards
Joerg

[veremin]

Or do we have other possiblities ? Better ones maybe ?

Since backup copy jobs are not currently supported as a target by backup to tape jobs, you can try to use combination of file to tape job, PS script, and hardlinks. The idea is that PS script finds the oldest (weekly) backup created by backup copy job, then, this file gets copied by file to tape job. Thanks.