Tape Pools & Retention question...
Greetings.
Brand new user here. We are in the process of moving over from a different product we had been using for 15 years.
My question is about Tape Pools, or rather how to 'automatically' make tapes available, or move them into the free pool - but only after a defined period of time.
For example. I have a 24 tape robotic library. I would like recycle these tapes and make them available for new backups if they are more than 6 weeks old. Can I do that?
I am worried that I see no automated mechanism for doing this, but perhaps I am just not seeing it. I see an option for doing it 'after n writes', but that will not do what I need, I think. I need a way to examine the pools and move takes to the free pool if they are 'old enough'.
Hi Steve,
To recycle tapes and make them available for new backups you do not need to move them to the Free pool. Just set up retention rules in you backup plan to delete backups older than 6 months. If a tape conatins several backups, it can be reused after the latest of the backups becomes 6 months old (unless there are dependent incremental backups on the next tape). All of the tapes will remain in the Acronis pool.
This is just a tip. If you need step-by-step instructions, please refer to the doc:
setting up a tape device for backups http://www.acronis.com/support/documentation/ABR11/index.html#14309.html
creating a backup plan http://www.acronis.com/support/documentation/ABR11/index.html#707.html
setting up retention rules http://www.acronis.com/support/documentation/ABR11/index.html#11675.html
Thank you for the reply... yes, I have been reading the documentation. ;-)
I do see the retention rules will do what I need, I believe... specifically the Grandfather-Father-Son (GFS) scheme. No reason to be moving tapes around between pools I guess.
So... is there any way to tell which tapes are 'available' to be overwritten in this case? All the tapes will be sitting in the pool, and Acronis.. I suppose will eventually start overwriting tapes that have exceeded the retention period - but the problem is - can I easily discern what taped those might be? Would be nice to be able to see this.
What I want to avoid, is getting caught with a retention scheme that exceeds the tape capacity of the library - and you could run into a situation where there are no tapes left that could be overwritten.
Again, thank you.
Currently, there is no way to know whether a tape is 'available' to be overwritten. To avoid running out of tapes, you may put one or two to the Free tapes pool and enable your pool to 'take tapes from the Free tapes pool' as required. Once a tape is taken from the Free pool, you are aware that there are no 'available' tapes in your pool. I have not tested this in details though.