You may have to consider this setting from nsr device resource :

  access weight   (read/write, hidden)
       This attribute indicates the weight of a single operation
performed on
       the device.  The "accesses" attribute will be incremented by
"access
       weight" each time an operation is performed on the device.  The
higher
       the weight, the less often the device will be selected for new
opera-
       tions.  Changes to this attribute are propagated to all devices
that
       have the same hardware id value. 

Back to your question, you should have 
DDS1's AW < DDS2's aw < DDS3's AW < DDS4's aw

With DD1 < DD2, DDS1 will be selected  before DDS2.
If DDS1 cannot satisfy, DDS2 will be used.

Give it a try. I never played with such device priority selection but
it should work.

HTH

Th



Kind regards - Bien cordialement - Vriendelijke groeten,

Thierry FAIDHERBE

HP Services - Storage Division
Tru64 Unix and Legato Enterprise Backup Solutions Consultant
                                   
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-----Original Message-----
From: EMC NetWorker discussion [mailto:NETWORKER AT LISTSERV.TEMPLE DOT EDU] On
Behalf Of backup
Sent: Sunday, November 05, 2006 2:22 PM
To: NETWORKER AT LISTSERV.TEMPLE DOT EDU
Subject: [Networker] DDS prioritize drives

We have an environment that is large in terms of the number of devices.

Each drive real or virtual is a legato device and you are limited to 512
device per backup-zone max (yes we are almost there :-()

Due to this fact we are rearranging and eliminating some devices.

Our question is this.

 

Can you prioritize  Dynamic drives, 

In the normal automatic backup (not scripted)

 

Say we have three machines and 4 dynamic drives

Machine A is using DD1 and DD2

Machine B is using DD2 and DD3

Machine C is using DD3 and DD4

We want to be sure that in normal circumstances each machine uses the
left
drive first for obvious reasons.

All three machines have to backup a 3 Tb filesystem (one saveset) NDMP
so no
multiplexing etc.

Assume we have to start all backup approx. at the same time due to
backup
window

 

Worst case scenario here

Machine A uses DD2 and Machine C uses DD3 so machine B has to wait on
both
12hour backups before is can start.

 

 

 

 

 


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