Tape Job Behavior & scheduling

[ayazkhawar]

HI,

I have configured VMs backup in the Forward Incremental Backup with 8 points retention policy and on Sunday full backup. I want to offsite the the VMs backup on daily & weekly basis.

For Daily basis configured a Daily Pool with 7 days retention policy & create new media set. The Tape job is configured to process Full+inc point to Daily Pool. On first run it process all Full+Incremental backup points but on 2nd run it only process incremental points to new tape. How to configure that all full+ incremental points written to new tape on Daily basis?

How to configure scheduling that on Sunday after a particular job "x" finish the tape job start??

Case ID : 00879272

[Shestakov]

Hi,

On first run it process all Full+Incremental backup points but on 2nd run it only process incremental points to new tape. How to configure that all full+ incremental points written to new tape on Daily basis?

Could you clarify your use case, why do you need to copy Full backups to tape? Do you use tape media rotation?

How to configure scheduling that on Sunday after a particular job "x" finish the tape job start??

In the schedule step choose "Run the job automatically" and "After this job".
Thanks.

[ayazkhawar]

Hi Shestakov,

Yes the tape media is rotated on daily basis. The daily tape set are used for offsite backup. If it contain the latest backup chain i.e Full+All incremental points the last tape set would be required to restore the VM. Where as the the current process required ALL week tapes to restore a single vm to latest point.


This will enable only after a particular say "x" job whenever the X job finish the job Y start and it will not check that Y job is schedule only for Sunday.

[Shestakov]

Thanks for the reply!
One more thing is not clear here: you said that you gave a daily tape rotation, but you want to copy backups to tape once a week. Could you please clarify?
I can guess you purpose is to copy 1 Full + 6 increments to tape weekly, so you will have chains of each week on a different tapes. Is that correct?
Thanks!

[ayazkhawar]

Apology for late response. It is not only on weekly basis. It should be done on daily & weekly basis as below

Daily Job run
On Monday Full+ 1 Incremental point (Tape Monday) [Latest Backup Chain]
On Tuesday Full + 2 Incremental Point (Tape Tuesday) [Latest Backup Chain]
On Wednesday Full+ 3 Incremental Point (Tape Wednesday) [Latest Backup Chain]
...
On Saturday Full+ 6 Incremental Point (Tape Saturday) [Latest Backup Chain]

Weekly Job run
on Sunday Weekly only Full backup created on Weekend (Week01)

Daily Job

On monody Full+ 1 Incremental point (Tape Monday) [Latest Backup Chain] (Same Tapes Used on Last Monday)
On Tuesday Full + 2 Incremental Point (Tape Tuesday) [Latest Backup Chain] (Same Tapes Used on Last Tuesday)
& So on.... Till Saturday

Weekly Job
Sunday Weekly only Full backup created on Weekend (Week02) .. After Month the weeks tapes will rotate on per week basis.

I hope this schedule would clear the requirements. One thing which I mentioned earlier for Sunday full Backup is for Forward Incremental Backup jobs but this is schedule on Saturday rather than Sunday so on Monday the latest backup chain comprise 1 Full+ 1 incremental point.

[veremin]

Two files to tape jobs seem to be a way to go:

1) Daily. File mask - .vbk, .vib. Full: each day is selected. Incremental: disabled.
2) Weekly. File mask - .vbk. Full: disabled. Incremental: daily on these days (Sunday).

Thanks.

[ayazkhawar]

Hi Eremin,

Thanks for the reply. This will write the ALL backup chains as per retention policy to tape not only the latest chain only.
In tape backup job when configured it always asked 1st time the latest chain to tape. Is it any possibility that it could be configure such that when ever tape backup job run only take the latest chain backup?

Thanks

[veremin]

Is it any possibility that it could be configure such that when ever tape backup job run only take the latest chain backup?

I assume that a file to tape job with a pre-job command (that makes it copy only chain starting from the latest .vbk) should be leveraged in this case.

[ayazkhawar]

Hi Eremin,
File to Tape back required 2 step restoration, 1st from tape to repository than 2nd repository to ESXi. Where as in Tape Backup jobs VMs can directly restored from Tap media which is preferable method in case of emergency.
Also I have tried to create different restore points of full chain i.e backup plus using two different jobs pointing to different media set for same backup job. when try to restore from 1st media set it shows the require tapes from 2nd media set as well. Although files are showing on 1st media in file tab of tape. Is it the default behavior that 2nd job point will take preference on 1st job created point?
Can we create two different restoration chain (Tape Backup) for same backup job?

[veremin]

File to Tape back required 2 step restoration, 1st from tape to repository than 2nd repository to ESXi. Where as in Tape Backup jobs VMs can directly restored from Tap media which is preferable method in case of emergency.

Even in case of backup to tape job VM restoration happens in two steps: from medium to repository, from repository to production host. However, the second step takes place automatically in case of backup to tape job, where it has to be initiated manually in case of file to tape job.

Can we create two different restoration chain (Tape Backup) for same backup job?

It should be possible.

Also I have tried to create different restore points of full chain i.e backup plus using two different jobs pointing to different media set for same backup job. when try to restore from 1st media set it shows the require tapes from 2nd media set as well. Although files are showing on 1st media in file tab of tape. Is it the default behavior that 2nd job point will take preference on 1st job created point?

Can you describe your configuration in more detail? How many media pools you're using? Tapes? How media sets, and overwrite retention periods are configured, etc.?

Thanks.

[ayazkhawar]

Thanks for reply. Following are the details of jobs and their respective media set and retention policy

Job: Daily, Media Pool Daily Retention 1 Week Having 2 Tape. Always continue using current media set. Run Daily after last vm backup job finished.

Job: Monday, Media Pool Monday Retention 1 Week Having 1 Tape. Create New media set for every backup session. Run only Monday
Job: Tuesday, Media pool Tuesday Retention 1 Week Having 1 Tape. Create New media set for every backup session. Run only Tuesday
...
Job Sat, Media pool Sat Retention 1 week Having 1 Tape. Create New media set for every backup session. Run only Saturday

All backup tape jobs contain same VMs Backup job as source. All tape jobs are configured to process full + incremental points.