Changing of media set type on used tape

[filda921]

Hello

We have ibm tape drive in our company and we using veeam backup and replication 9.5 U4.

We have 10 pcs of tapes, we doing backup every sunday, we rotating the tapes from 1 to 10 (like in circles) so at tape 1 there will be week 1, week 10, week 20 (tape 2 week 2,11,21) <- just for info. It is like three rotations of all tapes.

My colleague configured media set as "Creating a new media set for each backup session" last sunday there was first time when we inserted tape 1 AGAIN -> so there was already week 1 and we expected that veeam will add week 10 after week 1. Unfortunately veeam reported that he cant write data on this tape.

This problem was assigned to me to solve, i have read some documentation and find description of "Creating a new media set for each backup session", if im right our vision of backuping is not possible with this type of media set, because we need "Always continuing one media set." media set type for our vision of backups (more backups on one tape).

So i have question, when we have 10 tapes in "Creating a new media set for each backup session" media set type and there is one backup on each tape (like one rotation) can we change type of media set and continue ? i tried it and it doesnt help, does it mean that because tapes were added to "Creating a new media set for each backup session" media set type there are unusable now for usage in "Always continuing one media set." media set type ?

Thank you in advance ! if i described something unclearly i will correct it or explain it of course.

Filip

[Dima P.]

Hello Filip,

My colleague configured media set as "Creating a new media set for each backup session" last sunday there was first time when we inserted tape 1 AGAIN -> so there was already week 1 and we expected that veeam will add week 10 after week 1. Unfortunately veeam reported that he cant write data on this tape.

If the tape was written by previous tape job run most likely it's being sealed (i.e. media set remains open if that's the last tape in the media set sequence and it was not offline during last tape job start).

This problem was assigned to me to solve, i have read some documentation and find description of "Creating a new media set for each backup session", if im right our vision of backuping is not possible with this type of media set

Tape job will use new tape for every job run and close it (close the media set) when tape job run is completed, so it wont be possible to append data to tape even if you have some free space left.

when we have 10 tapes in "Creating a new media set for each backup session" media set type and there is one backup on each tape (like one rotation) can we change type of media set and continue ?

Every job run will consume single tape. On 11th job run you either need additional tape, or you should configure retention accordingly to make the fist tape expired (so it will be overwritten).

does it mean that because tapes were added to "Creating a new media set for each backup session" media set type there are unusable now for usage in "Always continuing one media set." media set type ?

Media set creation option works for all newly recorded media. When you change it it does not apply to already written tapes.

Cheers!

[filda921]

Hello and thank you for your response.

We did next steps:

1.) formatted the tape (whole tape, not quick format)
2.) change the type of media set from "Creating a new media set for each backup session" to "Always continuing one media set."
3.) insert the empty tape (4,4Tb)
4.) start backup job (backung up about 1,1Tb of data)
5.) after this step the backup was on tape (we can see that there
6.) we inserted the tape (with one backup of 1,1Tb)
7.) we again started backup job
8.) while few seconds the backup reported that it was succes but we cant see second recovery point (any new data from the first backup).

Any idea why it still does not work ?

Thank you in advance !

[Dima P.]

Just to make sure I get it right: you need the same backup files to be located on different tapes (simply put, you want two copies on two tapes), right?