Darrin Posted March 5, 2003 Report Share Posted March 5, 2003 Hi, I have a user who swaps tapes onsite but has no access to the GUI at that server for security and convenience reasons. If Dantz runs out of space on a given tape, ejects it and awaits a new media, what happens if that new media has data on it already? I would like to reuse these tapes on a weekly basis, having Dantz overwrite them as needed (overwrite protection would preferably be done "physically" by the user choosing tapes manually). So, in this example, the tape he inserted may have last week's data on it but he will have no way to click erase or "go" or anything like that after inserting the tape - will Dantz poll the drive and reuse the tape without any confirmation dialogues? I would like to run Dantz in this truly unattended state for this reason. Thanks! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
askirkland Posted March 7, 2003 Report Share Posted March 7, 2003 You just need to setup your backup to do a recycle of the backup set you want to reuse. My backup runs with 6 backup sets that I have already created... Day 1 of Week 1 - Run Recycle to Backup Set A Day 2 thru last day of Week 1 - Run normal mode to Backup Set A Day 1 of Week 2 - Run Recycle to Backup Set B Day 2 thru last day of Week 2 - Run normal mode to Backup Set B Etc... I did have to supply blank tapes for the first round of rotations... then I label the media with the appropriate tape # and Backup Set name. Kind of a backward way of doing a rotation/recycle, but Retrospect is kind of basic in this way. Hope this helps… Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darrin Posted March 8, 2003 Author Report Share Posted March 8, 2003 Thanks for the reply! Do your backups fit on single tapes? Mine won't at this point, and I'd like to know how you deal with multiple-tape sets without having the backup go during the day while users need to work, and/or how much the Dantz software slows down servers and clients? I have the open file option so theoretically I guess I could do a backup during the day when the user is onsite to swap tapes, but I'd prefer to go at night and have him swap tapes the following morning. In reference to your backup set creation, I think you can execute a backup script for the first time and then stop it just after it initializes an erased tape and adds it to that script's backup set, then eject and go on to the next tape/script combination until all your tapes are members of the proper sets. In your case you could do all 12 tapes at once in about 10 min instead of twice per week for 6 weeks on the actual backup jobs themselves. Just an idea to save you some time and uncertainty, like I said, "I think" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
askirkland Posted March 10, 2003 Report Share Posted March 10, 2003 I have 2 servers in different locations running backups running during the day for laptops... the backup definitely slows down the computers quite a bit, especially during the snapshot creation. A pain but necessary... Also the 2 servers run backups all night to get all the workstations. My backup sets are about 5 to 6 DDS-4 20/40 GB tapes each per server. I use an autoloader, so I just load them up once a week... I usually fill up the extra slots with a blank (allow for backup set growth) and the first tape (and second... if space) of the next backup set in the rotation. This makes it so I don't have to be there to swap tapes on Saturday. I think you are right on the backup set creation idea... I could have created them all at once. In case you didn't see this tip... might help, although I am not certain it works yet... just changed my scripts to incorporate this technique. web page Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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