Waiting for tape

[buster]

Hello looking for some help.

We have a tape rotation for exchange as follows:

Friday Exchange full synthetic
Monday Incremental
Tuesday Incremental
Wednesday Incremental
Thursday Incremental

I have two sets of tapes, Week1 for each day above and Week2 for each day above. We have a strict two week retention requirement. This morning the Monday night incremental completed successfully but the subsequent backup to tape job is sitting at WAITINGTAPE. The backup set is less than the capacity of the tape.

Am I missing a setting somewhere? I don't want to append to the tape, I want to overwrite the data that is there already but it seems to be appending.

Thanks for any help.

[Dima P.]

Hi buster,

Both incremental and full backups are pointed to the same media pool? What media set creation option are you using(Media Pool Options > Media Set, screenshot below)? Thanks.

[veremin]

And what overwrite protection period is specified in the setting of given media pool?

[buster]

Same media pool. The "Do not create, always continue using current media set" is checked.

[buster]

Data retention Policy is set to "Do not protect data"

[Dima P.]

Thanks.

- Set the retention (overwrite protection period) for the desired value of two weeks. Apply retention change to all tape media (existing and new)
- Set the media set to be created on a weekly basis. The best would be to create a new media set every two weeks (same as your retention).

[buster]

Thanks for the reply. I just need a little clarification on timing. So when should I set it to create a new media set? I have a full synthetic backup that starts on Friday night at 10pm, finishes around noon on Sunday and kicks off to tape immediately after that on Sunday. The first incremental tape starts immediately after the Monday night backup to disk and usually kicks off to tape around 1:45am Tuesday morning.

Do I set this to create a new media set just before 10pm on Friday, sometime on Sunday, or does the new media set need to begin on Monday night/Tuesday morning for the first incremental?

Thanks again.

[Dima P.]

If you want to keep Full + Incremental +.... + Incremental chain within one media set then set it to be created somewhere before Friday’s full synthetic backup

[buster]

Alright done. So the job is still stuck at WAITINGTAPE, the tape I want to overwrite and use has been ejected, and Veeam for some reason wants me to put in this Friday's tape which makes no sense. Can I simply cancel the running job, pop the tape back in, and run last night's tape job again since I made the retention settings changes?

[Dima P.]

If the tape job is only sitting in ‘waiting for tape’ state – feel free to stop it anytime you want. Additionally I’d mark the said tape as free to ensure the new media set is started from the scratch.