Need assistance with Tape Backup Sets

[bvjens31]

Hey everyone, I'm coming from about 2 years of working with strictly Backup Exec for all of my client's backup-to-tape software. Lately though, I've begun realizing that Symantec BE is more trouble than it's worth, so I'm trying one of my clients out with Retrospect 7.7 Server.

 

I need some assistance with Backup Sets, though. I've read through the tutorials and watched the videos, but I think I just need another IT admin like me to shoot me straight. My main mental block is the fact of backup sets and tape naming. With Backup Exec, if I had a client on a 2 week rotation, I would name the tapes Monday-1, Tuesday-1, etc for the first week, and Monday-2, etc for the 2nd week. When one of these tapes would get inserted, Backup Exec would know which tape it was and would know whether or not it was the correct tape for the upcoming backup job.

 

I don't think Retrospect works like this. First of all, I don't think there is a way to manually name media. By adding media to a set, it simply uses the next number in the queue. For example, my Monday tape for week 1 was named "1-Week 1", Tuesday "2-Week 1" and so on. But now I'm on Wednesday, and I have noticed that the Tuesday tape was somehow renamed to 1-Week 1. Is there any way I can just name a tape and have it stick? Or do backup sets work entirely differently than the sets I'm used to?

 

Any assistance would be much appreciated!

 

Chris

Iowa

[Lennart_T]

You need 10 backup sets:

Monday-A

Tuesday-A

...

Friday-A

Monday-B

Tuesday-B

...

Friday-B

 

Schedule a "Recycle" backup "every 2 weeks" starting on .

[Richy_Boy]

Yup, think of a backup set as a tape in your case..

 

Rich

[bvjens31]

Oh, you guys rock! The light bulb started flickering a little bit. I'm at said client's all morning so I will get busy creating 10 new backup sets.

 

So I will have 10 scripts scheduled, with each one destined for a different Backup Set, aka tape? And each script will be a recycle job that runs once every 2 weeks on it's respective day, am I getting all this?

 

Many thanks! I will enjoy a beer tonight in honor of your guys' wisdom, please do the same

Edited May 27, 2010 by Guest

[Lennart_T]

You can have one single script, with 10 schedules. That might make it easier.

[Daniels]

For example I have a script that uses 16 backup sets and has 16 schedules with each schedule doing a recycle backup on a different backup set every week for 16 weeks and then repeating.

 

Here is how mine is setup:

Week 1 recycle week1monday tape, repeat every 16 weeks

Week 2 recycle week1tuesday tape, repeat every 16 weeks

Week 3 recycle week1wednesday tape, repeat every 16 weeks

Week 4 recycle week1thursday tape, repeat every 16 weeks

Week 5 recycle week2monday tape, repeat every 16 weeks

so on until week 16 and then start over with week 17 which would be automatic if set up correctly

Edited May 27, 2010 by Guest

[bvjens31]

Ah, yeah after I started messing around I realized about the 10 schedules in 1 script thing, but instead I just left it with 5 scripts, M-F and just had 2 schedules for each of those.

 

Thanks again for all your tips. I have another question but I'll post a new question via forum etiquette