GFS Tape Backup Timing

[jmgal]

I changed the day of my tape backup from Saturday to Sunday in October. Monthly changed to first Sunday in the month (was first Saturday) and quarterly changed to first Sunday in the quarter (was first Saturday).

The last quarterly backup I ran was on the first Saturday in October. The next one is due on the first Sunday in January.

The backup ran on October 25. It ran a quarterly and then a weekly backup.

I moved the quarterly tapes, that shouldn't have been written until January 3, to Free.

The backup ran on November 1. It ran a monthly backup. As expected.

The backup ran on November 8. It ran a quarterly and then a weekly backup.

Is this expected behaviour? If not, what am I doing wrong?

[Dima P.]

Hello Alan,

Moved you topic to tape subforum.

I moved the quarterly tapes, that shouldn't have been written until January 3, to Free.

Just to make sure I got this - you've moved the previously written quarterly tapes to free media pool by marking them as free? If that's true mind me asking why you are doing this? Thanks!

[jmgal]

I only moved two tapes to free: the quarterly ones which were written inappropriately on October 25.

I don't need them. I have a quarterly backup which was written on Saturday October 3. I changed the backup day from Saturday to Sunday after that backup.

Quarterly backup is now configured to run on the first Sunday in the month. For some reason it made a quarterly backup on the fourth Sunday in October.

Also, why did it run both a Monthly AND a quarterly on November 8? Any other time it runs a quarterly backup it doesn't run a monthly one first.

[lyapkost]

Hi Alan.

When did you move tapes from Q 2020-10-3 to free? I believe somewhere between November 1 and November 8. If so, the behaviour is expected: the tape job starts and checks whether there are Q backups for the scheduled date on tapes. The tapes written on 2020-10-3 don't contain a backup from the first Sunday of the quarter so Q backup runs (it should copy files of the closest date to 2020-10-4).

As for the second question, in case M and Q dates are on the same day, the elder one (Q) is backed up to tape. In your case there was M backup from November and Q backup from (i believe) October so they are for different days and should be both copied to tape.

As a workaround, you may disable and enable the tape job at once. It makes the job to 'forget' about previous GFS dates and look only forward. Before doing that make sure all required GFS points from the past are on tapes.

[jmgal]

Thank you lyapkost.

A final question: would restarting the service (or indeed the whole server) have the same effect as disabling and enabling the tape job?

[lyapkost]

No, service restart won't help in this case. Disable-enable changes some fields database while service restart doesn't.