Help with designing Media Pool

[Joe_L]

I want to design a pool for media that will take long term archives. The idea is to write file-to-tape jobs that will append sessions to the tape but previously written sessions are never overwritten. This way a large tape is gradually filled by a number of sessions. When the tape eventually gets full then another tape is used to continue the process. This was a long term archive is generated that is periodically added to .

I am right using Media Set "do not create, always continue using current media set"?
Does Retention "Never Overwrite Data" allow additional sessions to be added later, or does it prevent the tape being used again?

[Dima P.]

Hello Joe,
Both settings are correct, but next full backup will be appended in such case. I assume you need to tune the schedule and use create new media set on the specified day option, to achieve such scenario.

Create new media set option should be set to the day before full backup to tape happens. You will get fulls + increments appended to one media set, then this media set is closed (and exported if you need) and new media set is created starting with new full backup.

[veremin]

I am right using Media Set "do not create, always continue using current media set"?

As Dmitry's mentioned, media set being created on specific day would work better. Otherwise, with continuous media set you'd have to insert a lot of tapes into library, should restore be needed.

[Joe_L]

ok thanks for your suggestions. I had assumed creating new media sets would force the next session onto a new tape. But from what you say it sounds like a tape can contain more than one media set? (I thought it was the other way round that media sets were containers of tapes).

There is no regular schedule - what I'm trying to do is for cold storage of dead projects. When a project is completed and reaches the end of it's online retention period it gets put on (multiple!) tapes for permanent storage and deleted from the server. Projects are smaller than tapes so I was wanting to append further projects to a tape at a later date, but when that happens is at an arbitrary time such as "x months after the customer has accepted the project is complete". Each session is a Full, there are no incrementals. The next session is a different project from a different storage area.

Of course I do rolling backups of the entire vm but this is different, its for archive not backup; and it is discrete chunks of "files by project" rather than "servers by date".

Joe

[Dima P.]

Hi Joe,
I like the user guide quote about the media sets: “media set is consequent data stream that can span several tapes” - you just control via UI to create a new one or use existing media set constantly.

If I were you, keeping in mind your scenario, I would use the ‘Do not create, continue using the current media set.’ option, so every next run data is appended to the last used tape.

More details on media set options here