Weekly tape job starts again same day

[davidwatts71]

ID# 03743489

We have recently installed a new tape backup server. We backup every Friday for 4 weeks and every first Sunday of the month for 12 months

The new weekly tape job started as planned on Friday 09:00 and finished at 19:30. But the same job started again at 20:00 and used 2 more tapes.
Can anyone explain why the tape job started again. It should only run full backup once a week.

I have seen people mention 2 registry keys that can be used, i would appreciate it if someone could explain how this is supposed to work.

tape-f29/basic-question-about-gfs-t51856.html

Thanks
David

P.S. To correct my first post, the first time we ran the job we had to choose Active Full "Weekly" in order to get the job to run. Is the reason the job ran again was because of the job did not run at the scheduled time?

[Dima P.]

Hello David,

I believe your are referring to GFS to tape jobs, right? Are you saying that tape job to weekly media set was restarted only when you manually start Active Full backup (does it run normally when you do not start Active Full backup)? Thanks!

[davidwatts71]

Yes that's correct GFS Tape jobs. When we set up new job and scheduled it to start at 9:00 it did not start. We had to select active full - "Weekly". Bu the same job started again when the tape job completed.

[Dima P.]

David,

Manual active full should not affect the regal job schedule, so the job start is expected. However, I wonder if the data that was written to tape is the actually the same full backup or it was created from the new restore point on disk? Thank you!

[davidwatts71]

Our weekly tape job just started and 4 of the jobs set to pending. "No GFS candidate for weekly media set was found for today, waiting"
Why do we get this message? the tape job has not run for a whole week. There are changes in the backup, so it should write to tape.

All of the jobs should run once a week with using 2 tapes. (2 drives)

[davidwatts71]

I think we have found the problem. There is an option in the tape job. Advanced settings: "Process the most recent restore point instead of waiting" if today's backup is not yet created or its files are locked, process the precious most recent backup instead of waiting for the most current backup to become available"

[davidwatts71]

I think this option should be on by default. its confusing for the user, when you wait a week and the message you get is "No GFS candidate for weekly media set was found for today, waiting"
in our case it used 2 more tapes that week.

David

[Dima P.]

David,

Thank you for sharing the updates! To make sure we are on the same page: the mentioned option was enabled in your tape job and that was the reason why backup was not archived to the GFS media pool, right?

[davidwatts71]

The problem was this

-Created a new weekly tape job to run on Friday 09:00.
-Tape job did not start at 9:00
-We started the tape job by selecting – Job – Active Full – Weekly.
-The tape completed and used 2 tapes
-But for some reason the job ran again on Saturday using another 2 tapes, I think that the job started again because the scheduled that was supposed to start at 9 did not run or the job was pending?

- The next Friday the tape Job started at 9 but four of the backups were pending with the message “No GFS candidate for weekly media set was found for today, waiting”
This was fixed by enabling the option in the tape job "Process the most recent restore point instead of waiting" if today's backup is not yet created or its files are locked, process the precious most recent backup instead of waiting for the most current backup to become available" in the Advanced settings.

[Dima P.]

Understood, thank you for getting back to me with the detailed explanation. Cheers!