Weekly Recycle and Daily Backup to different tapes

[meganbrad]

Hi all,

 

We currently have a 5 set rotation going, consisting of a Recycle backup on Friday, and then a Normal backup on Mon,Tue, Wed, Thurs. We are currently using the same tape for 1 week, (ie full recycle backup on Friday, then appending Normal b/ups on Mon-Thurs). This has me a bit worried, as we then have the latest full backup on site and being used for another week, with the risk of damage etc.

 

My question is can we use one tape for the Recycle backup on friday, and then use a separate tape for the normal backups during the week. We would then do a re-cycle backup the next friday to a new tape, and re-use the weekly tape the next week. (ie we end up with 6 tapes - 5 for Friday Recycle, 1 Mon-Thurs that is reused each Monday.) Would this mean that we have to manually erase the tape each monday, or can we set up Retrospect to erase the tape on a monday before starting the normal backup?

 

We are using Win server 2003, and Retro 7.0, with Sept RDU, backing up to an IBM VXA-2 drive.

 

Thanks

 

Brad Clarke

[natew]

Hi

 

 

 

Are you changing tapes every day? If so, how about a schedule like the attached jpg.

 

 

 

That way you maximize all 5 of your tapes. Each one has a complete backup and you can keep 4 weeks of backup history. You can increase the frequency of recycle backups if your tapes are getting full.

 

 

 

Thanks

 

Nate

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thanks

 

nate

[meganbrad]

Nate,

 

Thanks for the suggestion. At the moment we are only changing tapes of a Friday, when the re-cycle backup is done, and then leaving the tape in for the rest of the following week.

 

You schedule makes a lot of sense, because as you say it will keep 4 weeks of daily backups. But how do you schedule it? At the moment we have 5 sets, named Set1- Set 5. Each set is scheduled as a recycle backup on the Friday, and Normal backup on weekdays.

 

Do you have a set for each day (Mon- Fri) , but then how do you set it to recycle on the various days? Do you have a Recycle set and a Normal set, and set the recycle set interval to 8 days, so that it recycles every 8 days (or 5 backups)?

 

At the moment or normal backup is about 7GB, with our Recycle running to about 50GB, so we might end up filling a tape after 5 normal backups.

 

Also, on the topic of backup sets, as I mentioned we have 5 sets named 1-5. Changing the selection is a bit of a hassle, as I need to change all 5 sets. Is it possible to use only 1 set, but still be able to keep track of tapes etc?

 

Thanks

 

Brad

[natew]

Hi

 

To schedule it do this:

 

Create 1 script

Add all 5 backup sets as destinations to this script

Create 5 "day of week" normal backup schedules in the script. One backup per day to the corresponding days backup set.

 

This covers your normal backups. Now we will add 5 more schedules for the recycles

 

Create a "day of week" schedule:

Start date = next monday

Check only the Monday box

Set weeks to "5"

Select recycle backup to Backup set monday.

 

Next create another Day of week schedule

Start date = Tuesday the week after next

All the rest is the same but select tuesday and the tuesday backup set.

 

Offsetting the start date will set up the staggered recycle schedule for you. Make sure the schedules are all set to go at the same time. The days that recycles and normals overlap the recycle will automatically take precident and run.

 

Make sense?

 

Thanks

Nate