Veritas and Autoloader 1/8

[Kurt Manske]

Wondered if there was a forum of experts that could assist me in configuration of Veritas and the Unlitm LTO2 Storatworks Autoloader

[Claudio Ruzza_1]

Which VERITAS backup product?
Which Version?
Which operating system?
If you give some more details, we can try to help you.

I assume you're dealing with Backup Exec for Windows. In this case you can try the latest Veritas Device drivers.

Claudio

[Kurt Manske]

Sorry...

Veritas 9.1 Windows Server
HP Ultrium LT02 Storageworks 1/8 Autoloader
M$ Win Server 2003

I took ownership of this (non-working) configuration from another tech team.

I would like to configure Veritas to rotate back up to slots/media 1-5 monday through friday, and make a copy of the tape in slot 6 daily, which would eject so the owner of the company could take the tape home.

Media is labled "Monday::Friday" The problem is that I dont know how to tell veritas (or the tape machine) that on that particular day, back up to the appropriate date.

Apolgies, I am use to working with single tape drives and not robotic libraries.

[Claudio Ruzza_1]

Well, if you want to be sure that your tape has different labels (monday thru friday) you must create 5 media sets, and 5 backup jobs (monday thru friday) pointing to the approrpiate media sets. Every job must have a schedule that reflects your needs, so the backup specification named Monday must save your servers every monday and skip other days, and so on. Every media set must be set up with an append period of let's say 12 hours, in order to make possible your backup of multiple servers (if this is your case - if not, 12 hours can be reduced) in the same tape, and an overwrite period of 6 days.
To me is not clear your second need: You want a copy of a tape? Not possible with an autoloader with only a drive, you need at least two drives. Or maybe I'm missing some point.
However, this is not really related to this group, it mainly pertains to Veritas groups :-)
Bye
Claudio

[Kurt Manske]

Claudio:

You da man!

It sounds like what I need to do (based upon your recommendations) is create my m-f tape jobs for each tape and then have a daily job that copies the data on the tape to an ejectable "take-home" tape.

In regards to the Copy of the tape, what I was trying to acheive is Veritas to backup data to the M-F tape and then make a copy of that particuar tape that would eject from the Autoloader automatically that they could take home. My research tells me that I cant tell veritas to eject the tape physically from the autoloader (as opposed to the drive in the autoloader), and I will have to train someone to go to the autoloader and eject and insert another tape UNLESS I can convince them to buy a single-tape drive.

Thoughts?

[Claudio Ruzza_1]

First of all you can't have a local copy of a tape with an autoloader with ONE drive.
With a tape library equipped at least with two drives you can arrange a local copy of tape(s) with almost all Backup Software, Backup Exec too.
With an autoloader the only way to get two tapes with the same content is to run the jobs two times. Of course data will be slightly different, but the data Sets should be the same. If your need is only to export the UNIQUE copy of your tape to the Autoloader Mail Slot forget what i wrote about media copying.
You can get the automatic export of your media appending a post-exec script to jour backup job (search for post-exec in your backupexec docs). Your script should be able to query the backup Exec Database (once more, read the docs - backup Exec command line) in order to get the name of the tape containing your last backup, to get the Autoloader slot where this tape is placed in, and finally to move the media from the slot to the autoloader.
My problem is that i have no idea about writing scripts :-(

Good luck
Claudio

P.S. perhaps it will took less time to teach to the operator how to identify the media of last backup from the BE GUI and how to export it