Overwriting Tapes

[dtwiley]

Is there a way to force the product to overwrite a tape? Reason I ask is that our backups seem to keep appending to tape if there is free space and then running out of space. We use different tapes for each weekday so I'd like to overwrite them rather than append and run out of space. In backup exec you can choose whether to append or overwrite but cant find that option in Veeam.

[veremin]

I'm wondering what settings are specified on the given media pool, media set and retention ones. Thanks.

[dtwiley]

Ahh, I think I see the issue, I've got "Do not create, always continue using current media set", despite having retention set to "do not protect data". Does this make it just append every time?

[veremin]

Yep, retention applies to mediasets, since you have just one, VB&R keeps appending data in accordance with the said setting - "Do not create, always continue using current media set". Thanks.

[dtwiley]

great, thanks.

Is there a way of stopping it creating multiple synthetic backups, we've noticed that when we missed backups due to the above issue it tries to copy a backup for all the days its missed which also wont fit on even an empty tape. we've only got room for 1 synthetic backup, not all of them.

[veremin]

If your tape retention is shorter than one you have on disks, the described behaviour is expected. Backup server tries to copy all source data that is not currently present on tapes.

If you're satisfied with the described situation, you might want to switch to one of backup modes that don't require frequent full backups, such as reversed or forward forever incremental mode. In the former case, the latest point will be always a full backup that will be then copied to tapes during each tape job cycle. In the former case, this problem can be solved via virtual full backup directly created on tapes.

Thanks.

[dtwiley]

we're using forward incremental forever already. I've read the article on virtual full backup but its not clear how you actually enable it on the job. I'd like a virtual full every time I run a tape job but at the moment its creating a synthesized backup for any backup not already on tape. eg. we run tape on Monday-Friday but disk Monday-Sunday, so on Monday it tries to copy saturday, sunday and monday to tape which dont fit.

[veremin]

You can disable processing increment option. Then, select in the virtual full backup schedule the very same days that are selected in tape job normal schedule. Thanks.