Tape media sets and missing tapes

[0am]

Hi All

Background info:
We've got a Dell 124T 8 slot LTO3 autoloader which I've been using to write the disk backup jobs to tape with. I've got just one job that runs daily, using the same media set for full and incrementals. This has been working perfectly since we upgraded to v7 (yay no Backup Exec) until two days ago when we came to change the tapes and send the used ones off-site. Only 6 tapes we're full and the 7th had 100GB or so free space, but because it had very important incremental data on it, I ejected it and sent all tapes that had been written to.

Everything was fine until the next day when the tape job ran again, it failed with the error "22/08/2013 9:04:26 a.m. :: No media in drive" which I thought was odd. After checking in the logs and talking to support (case 00432654), turns out Veeam B&R was looking for that 7th tape that had the free space. That made sense, I had the media set setting set to 'Do not create, always continue the current mediaset', but I was expecting Veeam B&R to continue on to the 8th tape, and not fail because it couldn't find the tape it was looking for. The phone support tech suggested I change the media set setting to 'Create new media set for every backup session' so it wouldn't hunt for that 7th tape and carry on. That worked, and the job completed with no errors and only used half a tape.

This morning the tape job runs again and completes with no errors, but I checked the online tape media anyway and found yesterdays half used tape still was half used and the tape in the next slot has been used. A new media set has been created.

Problem:
I can't think of a way to get Veeam B&R to not worry about missing tapes that were in the autoloader, without changing the media set setting to create a new media set for each backup and thus leaving previous backup half written tapes half written.

Any ideas? Thanks

[0am]

I think I've worked it out. I usually change the tapes on Wednesday morning, so I've selected the "Export current media set once the job finishes" option in the job, but only on Tuesdays, which I'm hoping will prevent B&R from looking for ejected tapes. I've also got the media pool creating a new media set 10 minutes before the tape backup job starts on Wednesday morning.

Hopefully sorted!

[Dima P.]

Ashley,
Thank you for providing the detailed explanation and resolution of your issue!

because it had very important incremental data on it, I ejected it and sent all tapes that had been written to

This is expected behavior - as long as tape belongs to media set, tape should be on its place until media set is exported.

If understood your scenario correctly - the best way would be to use following options:
- Create new media set for every backup session
- Export current media set once the job finishes

Moreover we have a discussion on modifying the tape export functionality - so it would be even better that it is now.
Cheers!