[Veritas-bu] How to use different tape even when not full?

Two choices, in my opinion.

You can create a policy with 5 schedules, each specifying a different pool
with a different day in the open backup window.  Each of your 5 tapes would
be assigned (either manually or automatically from the scratch pool) to a
different pool name.  Note, you'll need at extra tapes to pull this off.
When the last image is written to your Monday pool tape, you'll need an
empty tape to continue any of that day's remaining backups or, depending on
your retention period for your data, allow the following week's backups to
continue to a new tape while waiting for your previous Monday tape to expire
and be reusable.  (NB won't fill in the "empty" space on the beginning of
the tape while waiting for the end of the tape images to expire).  This
would be the "classic" solution, IMO. 

Another choice would be to write a gizmo to be run as a post-job script.
This script would look up the previously used tape, then "suspend" it.  A
suspended tape will have no further backups written to it (like a frozen
tape) but will expire and be reusable once the image(s) on that tape expire
normally (unlike a frozen tape).  Each new "Monday" job will require a new
tape unless a previous Monday tape is fully expired of images.  You could
keep all your tapes in one pool if you choose with this method but it'll
probably require more tapes than the previous method.

HTH - Mark


-----Original Message-----
From: veritas-bu-admin AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu
[mailto:veritas-bu-admin AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu]On Behalf Of Louis-Luc
Le Guerrier
Sent: Tuesday, November 16, 2004 11:50 AM
To: veritas-bu AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu
Subject: [Veritas-bu] How to use different tape even when not full?


Hello,
I'm using NetBackup 5.0, and I have several tapes in a
robotic device. For example, assume each tape holds 100 GB,
and the content of each nightly backup takes 10 GB. Tapes
are labeled A00001 through A00005. 
I don't want to fill up A00001 (approx 10 nights) before
backing up to another tape. Instead, I want to use once
A00001, the following night use a different tape (like
A00002) even if first one is not full. I want to leave
all tapes in the robot.

Does anyone have any ideas?

Thanks.
Louis-Luc

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