ronnieferrell Posted December 12, 2007 Report Share Posted December 12, 2007 I'm backing up around 3.5T of data from an Xserve/Xserve RAID under 10.3.9 using retrospect 7.5 to our Magnum 224 LTO4 SCSI loader. I have skip to "blank" set in the prefs. I am doing a Full "recycle" backup on the weekends starting on Friday night and do a normal "incremental" Backup on Monday-Thursday nights. I have 3 tape backup sets that I rotate through: Week-One, Week-Two, and Week-Three. The backup schedule backs up to each of these sets on a 3 week rotation staggered by one week. So this week I'm backup up to Week-One, next week I'll backup to Week-two, and after that I'll backup to Week-three. Following Week-three, I start over with the Week-one tapes. Our backup is for disaster recovery only, not archival. One of our MAIN objectives is to have as much of our current data stored off site as possible. The issue I'm having is this. This week I'm using backup set Week-one. On Monday morning, I removed the full "recycled" Weekend backup tapes for backup set Week-one to take off site (backup set member: 1-Week-one, 2-Week-one and 3-Week-one.) Member 3-Week-one was not all the way full. I bring in from home my "Monday" tape for the Week-one backup set. This will be a normal (incremental) backup. If this tape is <blank> the normal backup will work as it should on Monday. It will "Skip" 3-Week-one which is not available and will use and name this <blank> tape 4-Week-one. But if this tape still has data on it from 3 weeks ago and is already named 4-Week-one, Retrospect will not use it for my weeknight incremental backup. So to have as much of our tapes off site as I can, I am having to insert my week day incremental backup tapes and manually erase them before my "automated" backup will work. (so it's not really automated...) If I leave ALL of the tapes in the loader for an entire backup set, the backup process is fully automated. But with leaving the tapes in all week, if we had to do a disaster recovery on a Friday, and all of the on sites tapes had been destroyed, I would loose a full weeks worth of data. Is there a way to set Retrospect to "skip to next available backup set member?" As in if 3-Week-one is the tape Retrospect is expecting but not available, but 4-Week-one or < "whatever # above 3"-Week-one> IS available then use that tape as if it were <blank>. I would think that since Retrospect "Recycled" backup set Week-one over the weekend that it would know that any data on 4-Week-one is of no use and to use it as a <blank> tape. Sorry for being long winded. I wanted to supply as much info as I could. Again if there is a better way to accomplish what I'm trying to do, please advise. Ronnie Ferrell Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CallMeDave Posted December 12, 2007 Report Share Posted December 12, 2007 Quote: Sorry for being long winded Oh my, don't _ever_ feel the need to apologize for providing as much specific information as you can in your initial post. Now Russ probably has enough information to give you some good advice!!! Dave Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rhwalker Posted December 12, 2007 Report Share Posted December 12, 2007 Quote: I'm backing up around 3.5T of data from an Xserve/Xserve RAID under 10.3.9 using retrospect 7.5 Is there some typo in this first sentence? There is no Retrospect 7.5 that runs on the Macintosh platform. Russ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rhwalker Posted December 12, 2007 Report Share Posted December 12, 2007 Quote: Is there a way to set Retrospect to "skip to next available backup set member?" As in if 3-Week-one is the tape Retrospect is expecting but not available, but 4-Week-one or < "whatever # above 3"-Week-one> IS available then use that tape as if it were <blank>. I would think that since Retrospect "Recycled" backup set Week-one over the weekend that it would know that any data on 4-Week-one is of no use and to use it as a <blank> tape. Not sure I understand completely. However, once you have named a member "3-Week-one", Retrospect will respect that member name unless the tape is erased, in which case it will use the tape and wipe out the name and put a new one on if it needs blank media. In my opinion, this is a bug because it prevents management of barcoded, pre-named, pre-erased tapes because Retrospect doesn't honor the names of the pre-named barcoded pre-erased tapes, but picks an erased tape from the autoloder willy-nilly on a whim, even if a pre-named, pre-erased, barcoded tape of the correct name it wants already exists in the autoloader. I turned in a bug report a long time back on this under our support contract, nothing has been done. Nothing. This bug was fixed years ago on the Windows version. Russ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ronnieferrell Posted December 12, 2007 Author Report Share Posted December 12, 2007 Yes, sorry for the typo. I mean 6.1.138 on the Mac. (I use 7.5 on our Win2003 servers as well. Got my numbers mixed up...) Quote: Is there a way to set Retrospect to "skip to next available backup set member?" As in if 3-Week-one is the tape Retrospect is expecting but not available, but 4-Week-one or < "whatever # above 3"-Week-one> IS available then use that tape as if it were <blank>. I would think that since Retrospect "Recycled" backup set Week-one over the weekend that it would know that any data on 4-Week-one is of no use and to use it as a <blank> tape. I'll try to give more info. In the above scenario. If tape 4-Week-one that I put in on Monday is already erased or blank, it will use it because I have "Use Blank media" selected in the prefs. But If tape named 4-Week-one has old data on it from the backup to it 3 weeks ago, (stale data) the backup will timeout waiting for media. Since Week-one backup set got "reset" over the weekend with a Recycle backup, I'm wanting retrospect to "see" 4-Week-one as valid media that can be used for an incremental "normal" weeknight backup even if it has "stale data" on it from the backup from 3 weeks ago. Let me know if that helps or confuses things even more? Also I agree with your "bug" I've noticed the same thing. I have a spare blank tape in my loader at all times just incase it needs to overflow onto it. One weekend I noticed it used this tape and named it something like 2-Week-two even though I had a fresh erased "barcoded" tape named 2-Week-two in the loader. I've found if I put the "spare" new tape in magazine 2 on my loader (which I'm not using yet) and leave all my barcoded and named tapes in magazine 1, then (which also has the I/O slot) then it will not use the "new blank" tape unless all of my barcoded and named tapes are full. FYI: I'm using the word magazine above to describe the tray that is pulled out that you put the tapes into. My loader has two of these trays that holds 12 tapes each. Not sure if "magazine" is what these trays are really called. Ronnie Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rhwalker Posted December 12, 2007 Report Share Posted December 12, 2007 Quote: I'll try to give more info. In the above scenario. If tape 4-Week-one that I put in on Monday is already erased or blank, it will use it because I have "Use Blank media" selected in the prefs. But If tape named 4-Week-one has old data on it from the backup to it 3 weeks ago, (stale data) the backup will timeout waiting for media. That's correct. Retrospect won't overwrite a tape with data on it, for your protection. When you "erase" a tape (actually, a Retrospect erase is different from an out-of-the-box erased tape), Retrospect writes its header on the tape with an EOT, and also marks the tape in its database as erased (no data / no snapshots; but consider also the bug about pre-erased, pre-named tapes). Quote: Since Week-one backup set got "reset" over the weekend with a Recycle backup, I'm wanting retrospect to "see" 4-Week-one as valid media that can be used for an incremental "normal" weeknight backup even if it has "stale data" on it from the backup from 3 weeks ago. 4-Week-one is a member (member # 4) of backup set "Week-one". Only a backup to that backup set will write to that tape (until / unless that tape is erased). If you have skipped to new media, then retrospect wants the next member in the series. If the backup set has been reset, then I believe that Retrospect has only marked member "1-Week-one" as eligible for writing; I think that you have to (manually) erase the other members of the backup set. If you think about it, that's probably as it should be. I'm not sure that there is any cure for this in your situation, considering the sequential nature of tapes and Retrospect's model for backup set members as appended portions of the same backup set, and Retrospect's paranoia to protect your data against accidental overwriting, even if it causes user inconvenience. It sounds like you might want something along the lines of the preferences that have been available in the Windows version of Retrospect since Retrospect 6.5: Retrospect 6.5 new media prefs You might try submitting a "feature request". Good luck. I have never seen a feature request implemented in the 15 years that I have been using Retrospect. Quote: Also I agree with your "bug" I've noticed the same thing. I have a spare blank tape in my loader at all times just incase it needs to overflow onto it. One weekend I noticed it used this tape and named it something like 2-Week-two even though I had a fresh erased "barcoded" tape named 2-Week-two in the loader. It's more than a minor annoyance for me; it's a serious show-stopper. I'm very annoyed that this has persisted for years after I turned in the bug report under our service contract; at first, Dantz/Insignia (before acquired by EMC) tried to call this a "feature", rather than a bug, and refused to address it when I submitted the bug report. But then I discovered that this, um, bug had been fixed a long time ago on the Windows version. The fact that Dantz/Insignia/EMC refuse to address this indicates that they just don't understand management of barcoded inventory, or they don't care. Only workaround that I have found is to never put erased tapes in the autoloader, allow the backup to fail when the next tape fills up, then put in the correct needed tape. As anyone who as visited these forums over the past few years knows, this is a serious hot button issue for me. Quote: FYI: I'm using the word magazine above to describe the tray that is pulled out that you put the tapes into. My loader has two of these trays that holds 12 tapes each. Not sure if "magazine" is what these trays are really called. I think you've got the right terminology. However, tape automation seems to be a bag of screaming cats. Every vendor has a different model for how it works. Russ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ronnieferrell Posted December 12, 2007 Author Report Share Posted December 12, 2007 Thanks for the help. I guess I figured that if I perform a "recycle" backup to a backup set that Retrospect should mark ALL members of that backup set as being "recyclable" as in it should treat any backup set member tape as "blank" even if it has "stale" data on it from the last go-round. To me that is what "sounds" logical. I guess I'll have to keep performing my daily "erase" of the tapes I put in for my weeknight incremental backups. Ronnie Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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