bi-weekly tape backup

[JK2015]

Hi.

We are currently running a backup job (to nas), that runs every evening (monday to thursday incremental and on friday full).
Now we would like to have two different tape backup jobs. On for even and one for odd weeks, so that we can use the media pools to never accidentally overwrite a tape.
Problem we are facing is how do you schedule the jobs to only run in even/odd weeks on let's say monday?

Besides this, we have tried running the two jobs manuelly, but on second run of even week it was backing up all the files of the last two weeks (since last run of this specific job) which was too much to write on the given files (and it would be redundant since backup job "odd week" already backed up the files of last week.

How can we solve this? Surely we could just create one Job which starts every monday but how do we make sure that we do not accidently overwrite the backup of last week?

Regards,

Jo

[PTide]

Hi,

Surely we could just create one Job which starts every monday but how do we make sure that we do not accidently overwrite the backup of last week?

There is a "Never overwrite data" option in Media Pool settings, combined with "Add tapes from Free media pool when needed" it should work. Have you tried that already?

Thanks!

[JK2015]

Hi,
There is a "Never overwrite data" option in Media Pool settings, combined with "Add tapes from Free media pool when needed" it should work. Have you tried that already?

Thanks!

At first this might sound like a good idea, but the problem is that we are using only two pair of backup tapes. One "pack" for even and one for odd weeks that get overwrite every two weeks. So this is sadly no valid option.

Thanks anyway.

[Dima P.]

the problem is that we are using only two pair of backup tapes.

These settings might help you to achive your goal.

- Media Pool: Setting tape retention for 2 weeks
- Media Pool: Create media set every 1 week
- Tape Job: Export media set every (once a week the day before new media set is created)

[JK2015]

Thanks for the Information. I created a media pool and job with your options and now running it for the first time. I'll report back when I have News (good or bad).

Regards,

Jo

[JK2015]

Just a little update. Still working on it. There was a small problem during my vacation, so I had to start over again. As far as I got, it seemed ok, except for the tape Retention, which I set to 12 days instead of 2 weeks, so that the "expiration date" of the tapes is before the new run of the Job starts.

[Dima P.]

Feel free to change the retention if needed in the Media Set Properties. The change can be applied to all the tapes (including previously written ones).