What about the 5th Saturday ?

[Reklov]

Hi,

for a better handling tape I have five weekly backup media pools created (Week_01 ... Week_05). In addition I have created 5 Tape jobs that relate the tapes only from the assigned pool.
The jobs always run (first, second, third, fourth, last) Saturday. As long as there are five Saturdays, that should work. But if there are only four Saturdays, then I have a collision with the fourth and last job.
For the moment, I do not know how to prevent from it. Unfortunately, there is no calendar for planning in Veeam and the calendar on the Windows Task Scheduler does not show any day name (PowerShell script for fifth job in four Saturdays necessary to disable), which makes planning cumbersome.
Do you have any idea?

[veremin]

Before we start discussing workarounds, can you tell what's the reason of using such peculiar approach?

[Reklov]

If I'll work with only one weekly Tapejob and only one weekly mediapool, there is the possibility that tapes are overwritten, which should not be overwritten (retention too short, too long retention, Tape Errors ...).
Working with multiple jobs and pools ensures that only the designated Tapes are used.

[veremin]

Providing that both media set creation and retention settings are specified correctly, tape job should not misbehave and overwrite tapes that it is not supposed to. May be you can write your requirements in regards to tape job and we will work towards setting appropriate options for one job, instead for multiple ones?

[Reklov]

Well, if everything works fine, I don't need multible Jobs & Pools. But if something went wrong ( Job fails and will be restartet, Tapeerror ...) there is the possibility that Tapes will be recorded that should not be recorded.
I need on every Slot within the Autoloader a named Tape ( e.g. sombody else can change a Tape on Slot 5 without knowing which Tape is on. ).

[veremin]

But if something went wrong ( Job fails and will be restartet, Tapeerror ...) there is the possibility that Tapes will be recorded that should not be recorded.

Forgive me my confusion, but I'm just not sure how having multiple pools helps to avoid that. Media set options, as well as, retention ones work the same in both cases (single pool or multiple pools).

So, while possibility is still there, the multiple pools coupled with multiple tape jobs adds unnecessary complexity.

Thanks.

[Reklov]

If you dont't have the expirience from a normal operating site, it will be confusing, but if some of the things above happen ( eg. Week_3 Job ), just only this Pool ( Week_3 ) is affected. No Tapes from other Pools can be overwritten. The Pools will not preventing from failed Jobs, but from writing on Tape_4 ( e.g. it is new, labled as Tape_4, on Slot 4 ), because it is in Pool Week_4 and not in Pool Week_3 or in one common Pool
It is important to operating personal, that on every Slot a defined Tape is mounted.

[Reklov]

Finaly I created one Powershell Script and start this one with the Windows Scheduler on 5th Saturday Months. For me it it more secure to work with more than one Mediapool.

Thanks.

[g.vankuilenburg]

Sorry to resurrect an old thread, but I came across the same issue.

We use a GFS rotation with weekly, monthly and yearly backups and we need to backup both VM's and a couple of directories from physical hosts. Unfortunately, it appears to be impossible to use a GFS media pool for a file to tape backup so we're stuck with creating separate pools and jobs for the weekly, monthly and yearly backups. We've set the yearly jobs for the first Saturday of January and the monthly jobs to the first Saturday of the other months.

However, for the weekly jobs this creates a problem. We can't set them to run each saturday because that would conflict with the monthly and yearly jobs. We can create separate jobs for the second, third and fourth saturdays of the months, but that leaves us one backup short in months with a fifth saturday. If we add a job for the last saturday of the month, it will conflict with the fourth saturday job in months with only four saturdays.

Does anyone have a solution for this, aside from creating a 'last saturday' job, only enable it for the months with five saturdays and update it each year?

[veremin]

May be a PowerShell script checking whether the executed weekly job conflicts with the monthly one and disabling the former in accordance would be a way to go? Thanks.

[elvbr]

Hi.
I am using VB&R for several years now, but facing an annoying issue with my Backup to Tape job.
My Backup to Tape schedule:
* Every Friday - Weekly Backup
* 1st Friday of every month - Monthly Backup
* 1st Friday of January - Yearly Backup

Each of the above media sets has a different retention period accordingly.

My first configuration was as follows:
* Backup to Tape Week_2 - running every Second Friday
* Backup to Tape Week_3 - running every Third Friday
* Backup to Tape Week_4 - running every Fourth Friday

*** and here comes the problem ***
* Backup to Tape Week_5 - which should run only in months where there is a 5th Friday - I configured to run every "Last Friday" since there is no option for "Fifth".

This would cause this job to run every Fourth Friday as well, since on most months the "Last" Friday IS the "Fourth".

Therefore, I would appreciate it very much if there was a way to introduce a "Fifth" week option to the VB&R scheduler.

Thanks.

[foggy]

Hi, thanks for the request. Meanwhile you can address this with the help of Windows Scheduler.

[x-f]

Same probem. Fourth x last Sunday conflit in months with five Sundays.
Windows Task scheduller is not solution.

My solution is to use pre job script on last job (last Sunday). This job is scheduled one minute later, then job for Fourth Sunday.
If will cancel itself, if job for fourth Sunday running.


$tapejob = Get-VBRTapeJob -Name Tape_weekly_4
if ($tapejob.LastState -ne "Stopped") {Stop-VBRJob -Job "Tape_Weekly_last"}