Both full and incrementals on tape

[McKITGuys]

Hi all,

Noticed this morning how much free space was on tape (5TB out of 5.5TB) and wondered if I am doing the tape backup correctly. We backup to tape four backup jobs. The backup jobs run Mon-Fri and then on Sat, we backup to tape. The backup jobs are forward jobs and they do *not* create synthetic fulls weekly (I think I tried that once and we do not have enought disk space). I have the "archive incremental backups to tape" option checked for the tape job.

I thought that option meant that I would get the full .vbk backup AND the incrementals every week. But looking at the details, I only get the full backup at month end and then for the following weeks I just get incrementals. So this means that if I have to restore from tape, I have to restore up to 4 tapes (to say get something from the last week of the month).

There is lots of room on the tape - how do I get the full backup and all incrementals since the full on to the tape. If I uncheck the option "acrchive incremental backups to tape", then my media pool option is greyed out.

Thanks.
Albert

[Mildur]

Hello Albert

With forever incremental backup jobs, tape jobs will write virtual full backups to tape.

I only get the full backup at month end and then for the following weeks I just get incrementals. So this means that if I have to restore from tape, I have to restore up to 4 tapes (to say get something from the last week of the month).

I assume you must have configured the schedule for the virtual full to a monthly interval?
If you want to have less tapes (and switch them on a weekly interval), you could schedule virtual full backups weekly. 1 Tape per week. Fully independent from the other tapes.

Best,
Fabian