Jump to content

Can I script new volume creation?


x509

Recommended Posts

Every month and every quarter, I create new backup datasets for my various backup scripts.  Almost all of the settings are the same, except for the actual dataset name month or quarter.  e.g. DATA 2016 05 or PROGRAMS 2016 Q2.  Can this operation be scripted or automated?

 

x509

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

It seems to me that what you really want, in Retrospect Windows terms, is known as a Scripted Backup Set Transfer.  This is described starting on page 221 of the Retrospect 11 Windows User's Guide.  The idea is that you keep recycling the same primary backup set(s) every month or quarter, after having previously transferred their cumulative contents to other secondary backup set(s).  In Retrospect terms this is known as a Staged Backup Strategy; the link is to the Windows tutorial that shows you how to automate a Staged Backup Strategy.  There is another Windows tutorial that goes into more detail on the backup set transfer step, but does not discuss automation; to do what you want you will need to choose the "Recycle source Backup Set after successful transfer" option—as briefly mentioned around 1:20 in the second tutorial and discussed on page 379 of the Windows User's Guide.

 

Do not be put off by the fact that the first tutorial I have linked to above assumes that the secondary backup set(s) will be on tape; you can put it/them on disk if you want.  However, if you are going to create a new secondary backup set(s) as often as once a month, you may find that—with an LTO4 Ultrium tape drive costing $900 and tapes costing $30/800GB vs. a USB3 disk drive costing $80/500GB—the economics favor tape over disk if you are going to do this for as little as 2 years.  Also note that, per page 241 of the Retrospect 11 Windows User's Guide, it appears that you can schedule the backup transfer script(s) as infrequently as once a month—the first tutorial I have linked to is a bit out of date.  Whatever the frequency you will, however, have to change the secondary backup set name(s) on the  backup transfer script(s) manually; I do not see a method of automating that/those name change(s).

 

I assume that you do not want to do Retrospect Archiving, which involves deleting files from your computer's disk(s) as you copy them onto a backup set.

 

Note that I do not use a Staged Backup Strategy myself; I am satisfied with rotating via schedule weekly among 3 cumulative primary 500GB USB3 disk backup sets (or media sets in the more-modern Retrospect Mac terminology), which I store offsite, retrieve, and recycle every 3 weeks.  Also note that, for weird historical reasons (I link to this Macworld article by way of the Retrospect Knowledge Base reference so you can know the reasons are acceptable to Retrospect Inc.), the terminology for Retrospect Mac was modernized in 2008/9 but the terminology for Retrospect Windows was not.  Therefore please let any knowledgeable comments, e.g. by Lennart Thelander or Scillonian, take precedence over what I have written above.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

You could use the New Backup Set option in the script schedule media actions. This will create a new backup set automatically so the script will write to the new backup set. If your set was named Backup Set A, the new set will be named Backup Set A [001]. Number changes with each new backup media action.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

What you want to do, x509, would IMHO require two capabilities: (1) The capability of automatically creating new Backup Sets whose names follow a specific pattern.  (2) The capability of duplicating existing Scripts—or modifying them—to use the automatically-created Backup Sets.  In addition, as indicated in your thread title, you would almost-certainly need:  (3) The capability of automatically creating a new Windows volume to put the automatically-created Backup Sets on.

 

Capabilities (1) and (2) would involve getting into the behind-the-scenes nitty-gritty of how Retrospect stores information on Backup Sets and Scripts.  I don't think you have a prayer of getting Retrospect Support to give you any help in doing this, and for reliability and security reasons I hope they won't give you any such help.  Capability (3) would involve  getting into the behind-the-scenes nitty-gritty of how Retrospect stores information on Volumes, but would also require getting into the behind-the-scenes nitty-gritty of how Windows itself stores information on Volumes.  I don't know anything about Windows internals, but that sounds like a quite an exercise to me.

 

What I have suggested in my previous post in this thread is IMHO the least-effort method of manually doing what I think you really want to do.

 

However, while I was writing this post Mayoff made a post that appears directly above this.  His suggestion would be applicable if you adopt the Staged Backup Strategy I suggested in my previous post.  In that case you would use New Backup Set as the Action in the backup set transfer script(s), so that (2) the secondary Backup Set names(s) would be changed each time those script(s) are run—say once a month.  You might not like (1) the Transfer Set Whatever [nnn] name that Retrospect would generate for such a Backup Set, but it would save you a bit of effort in manually creating new Backup Sets, and in changing the backup set name in the transfer script(s) to refer to them.  Either way, you would (3) have to mount a blank disk or tape each time a backup set transfer script(s) is run.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

It seems to me that what you really want, in Retrospect Windows terms, is known as a Scripted Backup Set Transfer.  This is described starting on page 221 of the Retrospect 11 Windows User's Guide.  The idea is that you keep recycling the same primary backup set(s) every month or quarter, after having previously transferred their cumulative contents to other secondary backup set(s).  In Retrospect terms this is known as a Staged Backup Strategy; the link is to the Windows tutorial that shows you how to automate a Staged Backup Strategy.  There is another Windows tutorial that goes into more detail on the backup set transfer step, but does not discuss automation; to do what you want you will need to choose the "Recycle source Backup Set after successful transfer" option—as briefly mentioned around 1:20 in the second tutorial and discussed on page 379 of the Windows User's Guide.

 

Do not be put off by the fact that the first tutorial I have linked to above assumes that the secondary backup set(s) will be on tape; you can put it/them on disk if you want.  However, if you are going to create a new secondary backup set(s) as often as once a month, you may find that—with an LTO4 Ultrium tape drive costing $900 and tapes costing $30/800GB vs. a USB3 disk drive costing $80/500GB—the economics favor tape over disk if you are going to do this for as little as 2 years.  Also note that, per page 241 of the Retrospect 11 Windows User's Guide, it appears that you can schedule the backup transfer script(s) as infrequently as once a month—the first tutorial I have linked to is a bit out of date.  Whatever the frequency you will, however, have to change the secondary backup set name(s) on the  backup transfer script(s) manually; I do not see a method of automating that/those name change(s).

 

I assume that you do not want to do Retrospect Archiving, which involves deleting files from your computer's disk(s) as you copy them onto a backup set.

 

Note that I do not use a Staged Backup Strategy myself; I am satisfied with rotating via schedule weekly among 3 cumulative primary 500GB USB3 disk backup sets (or media sets in the more-modern Retrospect Mac terminology), which I store offsite, retrieve, and recycle every 3 weeks.  Also note that, for weird historical reasons (I link to this Macworld article by way of the Retrospect Knowledge Base reference so you can know the reasons are acceptable to Retrospect Inc.), the terminology for Retrospect Mac was modernized in 2008/9 but the terminology for Retrospect Windows was not.  Therefore please let any knowledgeable comments, e.g. by Lennart Thelander or Scillonian, take precedence over what I have written above.

Thanks, but I'm "just a guy at home" with my little home LAN.  My backup media is a 4 TB drive mounted internally on the system that runs Retrospect.  I change out that drive once a year.  If that drive starts to fill up, I will move some older months or quarters to a second 4 TB drive.  Hitachi 7200 rpm 4 TB drives are about $180, so that's my annual cost.

 

For the rest of your post, it all seems very relevant, as does Mayoff's.  I have to print off this thread and study the posts in detail to see how I can implement one of these procedures.

 

Thanks. :)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thanks, but I'm "just a guy at home" with my little home LAN.  My backup media is a 4 TB drive mounted internally on the system that runs Retrospect.  I change out that drive once a year.  If that drive starts to fill up, I will move some older months or quarters to a second 4 TB drive.  Hitachi 7200 rpm 4 TB drives are about $180, so that's my annual cost.

 

For the rest of your post, it all seems very relevant, as does Mayoff's.  I have to print off this thread and study the posts in detail to see how I can implement one of these procedures.

 

Thanks. :)

 

I'm "just a guy at home", too, with 6 drives on 3 machines that need to be backed up.  I also have a special problem that I hope you don't have,  which is that for 29 years I have lived two floors down from a "junior-grade Master of the Universe" who has three times leaked water into my apartment—two times because of systematic negligence on his part.  In addition, for 20 years I was married to a multi-talented woman who both writes and paints, and who took to using a computer like a duck to water (not that kind of water ;) ) as soon as I gave her her first Mac.  

 

Therefore,  starting at least as early as 1995, I adopted  a removable-media backup strategy based on my years as a mainframe applications programmer.  I have three Backup Sets (Media Sets in Retrospect Mac parlance) named "Red" and "White" and "Blue", of which I Recycle one each Saturday; I carry off-site the Backup Set containing Recycle and Normal backups from a particular Saturday through the following Friday ASAP after that Friday's Normal backup.  The Backup Sets are now on USB3 disks, although they used to be on DAT tapes until my old "backup server" machine died of old age in 2010.

 

Years ago I decided that, if I (or she) deleted a file that I later needed back, I would know within three weeks while I would still be able to Restore it from an off-site Backup Set. Therefore my system, because it does not attempt to maintain Backup Sets extending back into the mists of time, does not require 4TB disks—only 500GB G-Tech G-Drive Slims.  My initial outlay, when I re-established my backup system a year ago after inheriting a Mac Pro to use as a new "backup server", was about $540—for the three G-Drive Slims and a USB3 adapter card and extra RAM for my Mac Pro as well as a new $119 copy of Retrospect Desktop Edition.  My annual cost, however, is essentially $0.

 

P.S.: Upped initial outlay in last paragraph slightly from $515 to $540; I remembered wrong, but have now found the Ars Technica post.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 weeks later...

Guys,

 

I read through your suggestions carefully and it seems that for what I want to do, Retrospect scripting won't save me any keystrokes.

 

For a while now, I've been meaning to learn Windows PowerShell, and maybe this scripting need would be my first project.

 

@DavidHertzberg:  I'm originally from NY, NY, still carry a Metrocard in my wallet for when I'm in town on business.  My programming skills go back to the days of System/370, with languages like Fortran and PL/1. Plus JCL of course. :(

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
×
×
  • Create New...