Recycle and Normal backups on same tape

[NathanH]

Retrospect Server on a Win2K Server with a Travan NS20 tape drive...

 

 

 

We're having some trouble setting up the following unattended backup:

 

 

 

- Monday night, a full recycle backup is run

 

- Tuesday through Sunday night, a normal (incremental) backup is run on the SAME TAPE

 

- Monday morning, the receptionist swaps out the tape (with the oldest in a rotating set of 8 tapes) and takes it off site. She would then return the one she took off site the week prior to the tape queue.

 

 

 

It's going to be run on a logged out backup server, so we're not able to respond to error messages, requests for tapes, etc. We'd like it to just run with the only user intervention needed being a weekly tape swapout. As configured above, we'd always have one tape off site with a full backup in case the building burns down or someone steals the server, as well as 8 weeks of history in case we needed to get at an old file.

 

 

 

We set up single backup set named Backup Set A. We then created a single backup script and created two schedules: one to run a Recycle backup on Monday night and one to run a Normal backup the rest of the days of the week. We started with our set of 8 erased tapes. The Monday night backup worked fine, but on Tuesday it complained that the tape was not "erased or named 2-Backup Set A". Retrospect apparently named the tape 1-Backup Set A during the Recycle backup the night prior. The rest of the week it kept asking for an erased tape or named 2-Backup Set A.

 

 

 

Why is is expecting a different tape? Is there a way we can get Retrospect to not care what the name of the tape is and just use whatever it has in the drive? I've explored the option of using Backup Server Scripts which apparently don't care about what media is present, but it doesn't have an option for a Recycle backup.

 

 

 

Any assistance would be much appreciated.

[lv2ski]

Your logic is correct, although the way it works with Retrospect is a little different.

 

 

 

What you want to have is ONE script with TWO destinations - one called Backupset A and one called Backupset B. Or you can name one Week 1, week 2 etc. Your choice.

 

 

 

Then in your schedule you will schedule a 2 week rotation, recycle on Mondays, normal on T-F for both backupsets. Total number of schedules should be 4 in this script.

 

 

 

Remember to set each schedule to 2 in the weeks box so that it will do a two week rotation.

 

 

 

Hope this helps....

 

Melissa

 

 

 

 

[NathanH]

Thanks for your reply Melissa. But I'm still a little confused. Won't we still have the tape naming problem that we have now? It seems like on tuesday, it would then be asking for media named 2-Backupset A, when the recycle the day before named the tape 1-Backupset A. What we really want to be able to do is stick any of the tapes in there on Monday and just leave it in the rest of the week.

 

 

 

I'll set up the schedule you mentioned and see what happens.

 

 

 

Thanks again...

[lv2ski]

You will not have the problem of the wrong tape name if the script is setup as suggested.

 

Week 1 -

 

M Recycle 1 -BU Set A

 

T Normal 1- BU Set A

 

W Normal 1- BU Set A

 

TH Normal 1- BU Set A

 

F Normal 1- BU Set A

 

 

 

Week 2 -

 

 

 

M Recycle 2 -BU Set A

 

T Normal 2- BU Set A

 

W Normal 2- BU Set A

 

TH Normal 2- BU Set A

 

F Normal 2- BU Set A

 

 

 

Week 3 -

 

M Recycle 1 -BU Set A

 

T Normal 1- BU Set A

 

W Normal 1- BU Set A

 

TH Normal 1- BU Set A

 

F Normal 1- BU Set A

 

 

 

etc....