Including all VBKs not just changed ones

[Joe_L]

I have a number of backup jobs, some run daily, some weekly, some only occasionally. All the jobs are reverse incrementals. All of the resulting VBKs are then written to tape weekly and monthly, the weeklies are recycled and the monthlies retained. It looks like VBKs are only written onto tape when they've been changed and the ones that are written less frequenctly are not being added to every tape. How do I force all files to be written to every tape so that any tape has the entire suite.

Why re-write unchanged files to tape? So each tape has a consistent complete set, making recovery to a given point in time simpler.

I could of course run the occasional jobs more frequently but this seems pointless unless there's no way to force "all specified files".

Joe

[Shestakov]

Hello Joe,

It looks like VBKs are only written onto tape when they've been changed and the ones that are written less frequenctly are not being added to every tape. How do I force all files to be written to every tape so that any tape has the entire suite.

The backup to tape job runs regardless of the changes in the VMs.
Note that backup to tape job does not create any backups: it uses already existing backups produced by regular backup and backup copy jobs as source and copies them to tape. Each time the tape job runs, it analyzes the tape archive and updates it with all backups that are available on disk at the moment.

Regarding your use case, do you want VBR to backup VMs to tape even if there were no runs of the source jobs?
Thanks.

[Joe_L]

Hi Nikita,
Yes, I want all the VBKs from the selected jobs written to every tape, including the VBKs from jobs that have run this week AND the VBKs from jobs that were run a few weeks ago (but not re-run this week).

>Each time the tape job runs, it analyzes the tape archive and updates it with all backups that are available on disk at the moment.

That is not happening. I am only getting some of the VBKs that are on disk at the moment, just the ones that have been changed.
Joe

[Shestakov]

Are you using backup-to-tape or file-to-tape job? Have you scheduled both Full and Incremental runs?
In a case of File-to-tape with incremental runs the described behavior: "That is not happening. I am only getting some of the VBKs that are on disk at the moment, just the ones that have been changed." is expected.
Thanks!

[Joe_L]

The tape job is backup-to-tape. Incremental is not selected, I'm only storing VBKs here.

[veremin]

If you want to copy the whole set of .vbks each time tape job runs, then, may you should give a shot to files to tape job. Create a files to tape job, select directories where .vbks located at as its source, let it copy only .vbks by specifying corresponding file mask, and make it run only full copies (full backup schedule).

Thanks.

[Joe_L]

ok I'll try that.

The implication of what you say above is that expected behaviour is as follows:
Backup-to-tape only writes changed jobs to tape;
File-to-tape with incrementals selected only writes changed files to tape
File-to-tape no incrementals writes all selected files to tape regardless of changed or not

Is that right?
Joe

[Shestakov]

Correct. Backup to tape copies new restore points if there is any. And incremental file-to-tape checks modification date of the file/folder to realize if it need to perform the copy.
Thanks.

[Joe_L]

files to tape job, select directories where .vbks located at as its source, let it copy only .vbks by specifying corresponding file mask, and make it run only full copies (full backup schedule).

Just reporting back to say this solved the problem. Many thanks for your help.
Joe

[veremin]

You're welcome. Let us know, should other questions arise. Thanks.