Archive incremental backups to tape

[OMW72]

Hi Team,
I have a question in terms of the function archive incremental backups to tape.
It looks like that this option archive only the current incremental on tape.
I looking for a possibilty to save always all inkremental on tape that has been created after the last full backup.
Example:
Friday active full
Mo-Thuersday inkremental

On Tape:
Friday --> Active Full
Monday --> Inkrement Monday
Tuesday -> Inkrement Monday/Tuesday
Thursday --> Inkrement-Monday/Tuesday Wednesday/ Thuersday
Friday --> New aktive Full
This would be help to reduce the recovery time because you only need to import the tape with the VBK and the tape for the day in question where the data has been lost with all necessary vib´s for the restore.

Regards,
Oliver

[david.domask]

Hi Oliver,

> I looking for a possibilty to save always all inkremental on tape that has been created after the last full backup.

"Always" will be the challenge here.

Backup to Tape works by comparing what the job has written to tape so far to what is on the repository, and backing up whatever is on repository but not yet backed up to tape.

File to Tape is best suited for this, you can set different schedules for Full and Incremental backups within the File to Tape wizard.

[OMW72]

Hi David,
as always thanks for the quick response.

Backup to tape:
Does it mean that only the last created increment has no kind of flag therefore it will be used für the backup to tape job?

File to tape:
Great this exactly what we need because in our new environment we have to use the file to tape option.
Please allow me to ask one more question. Does the Full and Increment option always use all vbk´s and vib´s of the repository folder? If yes is there a way that the jobs only use the current backupChain? Our goal is to use 30 retention days for the backup jobs. But we need to have only the last created chain on tape.

regards,
Oliver

[david.domask]

You're quite welcome Oliver.

> Does it mean that only the last created increment has no kind of flag therefore it will be used für the backup to tape job?

Not quite. Put simply, anything on repository not yet backed up to tape by the job will be queued for tape-out. The tape job will compare the found backups against what you configured in the job (e.g., archive incremental backups, latest chain only, etc), and tape-out any backups that meet your configured settings. So it's not about "last created", it's about what is on repository vs what is on tape.

> Does the Full and Increment option always use all vbk´s and vib´s of the repository folder?

Correct for Full. Full will take the entire folder and do a full backup. Incremental will backup only files that have changed since the last full backup.

> But we need to have only the last created chain on tape.

Regrettably, scripting will be required to accomplish this, there's not a means right now of telling the File to Tape job to only take the latest chain. Set-VBRFileToTapeJob can be set as a pre-job script and you can set it to fetch just the most recent backup files in the repository folder. The File to Tape job will process the script first and update its settings before proceeding to the actual backup.