Context between expire date and incomplete tapes

[burak]

I'm currently having some issue with a tape job, that the tapes are not accepted and declined as NOT VALID.
Support is already contacted. However, I'm unsure if my understanding between two parts of tape jobs is correct.

Since backup files are not that large (ca. 200GB), tapes have a lot of empty space, e.g. LTO-6 tape with one backup can still get 2,1TB on it.
This actually allows me, to keep multiple version of backups on a tape. What I want to achieve is that the the weekly/monthly tapes in a GFS media pool, looks like this:

Code: Select all

MARCH 2018 - MARCH 2019 - MARCH 2020 - EMPTY

If I set the overwrite protection period only to several months, I guess MARCH 2018 will be overwrite by MARCH 2019 backup as soon as the monthly backup starts.
My idea was to set the monthly media set overwrite protection period on 90 months and activated the option "Append backup files to incomplete tapes".

Is my understanding on this correctly or can cause this an issue, because tape is not expired yet, so tape will be rejected for the job?

[PTide]

Hi,

From the top of my head, "Append backup files to incomplete tapes" option might not work due to "Tape protection" set as these settings override media pool protection settings.

What I want to achieve is that the the weekly/monthly tapes in a GFS media pool, looks like this <...>

Assuming that 10 weekly fulls can fit into a single tape, the media set would look like this:

MEDIA SET START
[tape1]: March 2018 weeklies (4), March 2019 weeklies (4), March 2020 weeklies (2)
[tape2]: March 2020 weeklies (2), March 2021 weeklies (4), March 2022 weeklies (4)
...
[tapeN]: ....

Is that what you want?

Please also post your case ID,

Thanks!

[burak]

From the top of my head, "Append backup files to incomplete tapes" option might not work due to "Tape protection" set as these settings override media pool protection settings.

Tape protection is not activated.

Assuming that 10 weekly fulls can fit into a single tape, the media set would look like this:

MEDIA SET START
[tape1]: March 2018 weeklies (4), March 2019 weeklies (4), March 2020 weeklies (2)
[tape2]: March 2020 weeklies (2), March 2021 weeklies (4), March 2022 weeklies (4)
...
[tapeN]: ....

Not excactly. The approach is for monthly and weekly backups the same. Weekly tapes are rotating:

MEDIA SET WEEKLY (4 tapes)
[week1]: Week 1 | Week 5 | Week 9 | ...
[week2]: Week 2 | Week 6 | Week 10 | ...
[week3]: Week 3 | Week 7 | Week 11 | ...
[week4]: Week 4 | Week 8 | Week 12 | ...

MEDIA SET MONTHLY (12 tapes)
[January]: January 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | ....
[February]: February 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | ...
....

At the moment, the monthly tapes contains only the backup of 2018 months. I would like to append the 2019 backups and sooner also on the tape of the particular tape.
So, I enabled the append option in media set options and to prevent, that the content is overwritten, I set the overwrite period setting to an high value (in my case, 90 months)

Case ID is #03444255. However, I'm from Germany, so content is in German. However, I guess support employee is on it or will call me back soon.

[burak]

Hello,

any update on this?

Support told me, this is not possible by design. Or did he misunderstood me?

[Dima P.]

Burak,

Sorry for keeping silence. Tape media is used by media pool in sequential order. Once the tape is removed from the library and another tape is used by the same job, first tape is considered as closed. Unfortunately there is no way to append data to the closed tape. I've added your vote to this feature request. Thank you!