My Back Up Job Will Not Finish

[Rob_251]

I am running two Ultrium 215 drives, one external and one internal, each connected to a server used specifically for backup duty. They each have their own scsi card(both are Adaptec 29160's). I'm using Veritas BE 9.1. I have the Server connected to a nas, the internal 215 is hooked up peer to peer, and the external 215 is connected through a lan. I am running two backup jobs, one about 60Gb and the other about 170Gb. These two jobs are set up exactly the same, the only differences being their size. They both come from the same drive on the nas, just different folders. The larger job kicks out the tape at about 100Gb every time I have tried to run it, while the smaller one runs fine.
When the job stalls it kicks the tape out and asks me to insert overwritable media into the drive. The tapes I am using are brand new. I have tapses for Mon.-Thurs., A separate tape for every Friday, and the EOM. Since we only use a tape once, I don't overwrite protect them at all. There a few articles in the Veritas KB that mention this error, but none of them seem to fit my problem. I tried switching the jobs to run on the opposite drives and the same thing happened. I have run hp LTT and there doesn't seem to be anything out of the ordinary. This is my first experience with the Ultrium drives, and BE, so it is entirely possible that I am missing or overlooking some thing simplistic. I have been searching through this forum, the Veritas KB, the hp KB, and am currently waiting on a call from Veritas Tech Support, but I wanted to try all avenues. I normally wouldn't worry about this, but, My nas(which was here before me)has 370GB of space total. It is running v2i protector set to do the base backups during the weekend, and incrementals every hour(from 8 to 8) during the week, so I have to clear the hard drive space on the nas before the next base backups or there will not be enough space. I help run the network for a bank, so I can't erase this information unless it is backed up. I know this is kind of run on, but I would greatly appreciate any help that is offered. I will gladly try to answer any questions you guys have, but I am not an IT smarty, I was just kind of thrust into this job. I have attatched the log for the job that I am having problems with. It was cancelled because I kept getting the same error popping up.

Rob

[Brian_Murdoch]

Hi Rob,

You have actually provided the reason for your problem in the description of the backup which fails.

Key features of the HP StorageWorks Ultrium 215 tape drive are as follows:

100 GB of native storage capacity on a single tape cartridge (200 GB of storage capacity with 2:1 compression)
Native transfer rate of 7.5 megabytes-per-second (MB/s) (Sustained data transfer rate of 54-GB per hour with 2:1 compression).

It is impossible to be able to achieve 2:1 compression on all file types. Some compress better than others but with the mix of data types in the general computing environment today, you will be extremely lucky to get 150Gb saved onto one tape. The figures quoted by all tape manufacturers generally involve the 2:1 ratio values i.e. the best it can possibly ever achieve with the correct type of data. This is an old argument I'm afraid and well known.

You backup has simply reached a point where it can't get any more data onto one tape and it needs another one. You won't be able to get your 170Gb onto the tape I'm afraid.

Some would argue that if you compress the data on the disk before backing it up it will fit but infact this can lead to even larger backup requirements in some cases.

You might have some success with this but I'd still argue that your trying to get too near the magic 200Gb 2:1 compression figure which you won't achieve.

I think you need to trade up to an Ultrium 460 to achieve backups to one cartridge.

Key features of the HP StorageWorks Ultrium 460 tape drive are as follows:

200 GB of native storage capacity on a single tape cartridge (400 GB of storage capacity with 2:1 compression)
Sustained data transfer rate of 30 MB/s in native mode (60 MB/s with 2:1 compression)

Sorry Rob,

Regards,

Brian

[Rob_251]

Thank you Brian. I sort of had a suspicion that possibly could be the case, especially after multiple jobs stopping at the same point. I just wanted to know for sure since this is my first experience with these drives, and this software. Again thank you for your time.

Rob