Having come from a Veritas Backup exec background.. i know nowt about arcserve..

We have just been given control of a couple of servers which use arcserve to backup to tape each evening... im trying to "align" the backup stragegy to fit in with our existing servers (ie 7 day rota.. daily tapes) so i need to know a couple of things.

1) the current setup doesnt have a media pool.. so ive set one up and imported the relavent tape "sessions" but i need to change the tape name to suit the new rota.. do i have to reformat the tapes to re-name them?

2) how do i add new tapes into the database.. have put a blank tape in and it comes up as new tape.. what do i have to do to prepare it for use in the media pool?

thanks in advance

Answer the phone

Oh, God,

Arcserve? Oh, god.

I used to be fully certified, but I've forgotten what I knew. You can probably get a manual at www.cai.com

Phil

I used to be fully certified

I can believe that... :rubchin:

Rob.

Aha.. ive kinda sorted it

i prefer Backup Exec... far less "tarty".. who needs all these :gay: backup wizards

waittill you get an error in it lol then the fun starts

We use arcserve at work, currently Version 11. I would avoid the use of media pools because they are more hassle than they are worth. When things go wrong getting everything back in step is a nightmare. I binned all the pools and now have a simple backup regime that simply relies on the right tape being put it on the right day.

To rename the tapes you need to reformat it as its the tape header info thats in the database.

Thanks for the info everyone

have had a play instead of doing real work and am getting the hang of it now am reformatting the tapes with new headers for this week to get the routine going. altho theres a few tape records in the database that crashes the program when i try to delete them :confused:

btw.. whats the whole deal with "sessions"?

Colin, if you dont want the records in the database you can have arcserve purge the whole contents and stat afresh with a nice empty database. Use the server admin program to do this.

Colin, if you dont want the records in the database you can have arcserve purge the whole contents and stat afresh with a nice empty database. Use the server admin program to do this.

I dont want to do that, as theres still a bunch of records (monthly backups) that i need to keep... its not that much of an issue really.. think the system will prune them after a month anyway

Ooooh, we use Veritas at work too - but its dead easy - setup to start backing up the only two servers in the building at 7pm - we whack a tape in each, at 5pm when we leave and next morning - ta da! 2 back ups to take home that day!

And I've gone into the program too, and its dead easy to restore from tapes, plus the scheduling is a piece of cake, even for someone with NO server training at all, like moi!

I dont want to do that, as theres still a bunch of records (monthly backups) that i need to keep... its not that much of an issue really.. think the system will prune them after a month anyway

go and delete them its not a problem just recover the database from a tape if you need it again

its funny but arcserve does exactly what i need it to do it backs up all 270gb of data from 4 windows servers and 1 unix every night on a monthly cycle with 1 archive every 4th friday starts at 7pm finishes at 1 am all on one tape

............And do any of you do test restores? Being "in the business", we see a lot of customers who cheerfully back up loads of data, but, come restore time, can't get it back for various reasons.

Just my 10-p worth......

Phil

Right.. so my new backup strategy is working well BUT is there any way to get it to email status messages? ive got this set up but it never works :( and also automatic printing of joblogs would be nice

yes we do test restores to all machines and they all work the unix restores fine the exchange does too the other data is all good as well.