Backup Central

This is my first time working with Backup Exec, other than watching the Job monitor, and doing some simple restore operations, so detailed responses that really spell things out for me would be greatly appreciated.

I've inherited what seems to be, a rather poorly set up backup system. We run Backup Exec 12 SP3, backing up to a Dell TL2000 tape library system. Backup sources are three servers. We get their file systems, their system states, and a SQL database via the agent from one of them.

Previously, we had 10 tapes used in something close to GFS rotation. That's 5 tapes for M-F incremental backup, 4 tapes for weekly full backups, and 1 tape for a single Monthly backup.

We've got 7 media sets, including individual media sets for M-F, a "weekly rotation," and a "monthly rotation." Under jobs, we've got 7 jobs corresponding to the 7 media sets. The jobs are linked to 3 policies, "daily," "weekly," and "monthly." Finally, we have 1 backup selection list.

We have a big problem with this configuration, because my predecessor promised my company that we were set-up to do something like 4 months of daily backups. Instead, we get 1 month of weekly backups, and 1 week of daily backups. It seems something about the overwrite/append periods is messed up on the Monday incremental, and the tapes only ever stores as much as 40GB; the amount of change that happens on Monday.

I've obtained additional tapes, and now we have a total of 19. I'd like to set up a proper GFS scheme, with 12 monthlys, 3 weeklys, and 4 dailys. I've got the tapes in the library, inventoried, and ready to go. There is one complication however. Backup Exec has marked all the new tapes as "Scratch Media," and begun using them in ways that are hard for me to understand. Slots 11 and 12 were automatically put in to the weekly rotation, a monthly was written to 14, and a Monday incremental to 16. It seems to have a mind of it's own.

How many jobs, media sets, policies, selections lists, etc. should we have? Should M-T really have their own tapes, rather than writing the first weeks M-T to a single tape, then using another the next? Is there a way to smoothly transition to the new system, so that we don't destroy backups we currently have? What the heck is Backup Exec doing, automatically assigning things to media sets? I gather that some media's info being displayed in blue and other's in black is related to this phenomenon? What should overwrite and append periods be? Why was it that Backup Exec previously reported having backups older than it really did, until after I performed an inventory? Is an inventory something that should be scheduled to happen once in a while? Am I missing anything? Anything else I should check/know/do?

Please feel free to comment on anything that might seem contrary to best practices, as well as the technological issues.

You're going to have to get into the BE documentation, or get in an expert, this is risky stuff.

Separate tapes per day usually best.
Any need for separate media pools & jobs for M-T? I'd consolidate.
Let BE use the new tapes as it needs to. If you don't like that, add them to a media pool to protect them.

Wow. OK where to start.
Backup Exec will write to the oldest scratch media first by default (I Believe) It will then write to the oldest overwritable media of its specified set. I believe these settings can be defined/clarified in Tools> Options > Media Management

Check the Tools menu >options > Backup > to make sure that 'Media overwrite protection' is set to 'Append to media, overwrite if...'

Next you are going to want to define your media sets. Go to the media tab and create your monthly, weekly and daily sets with rules defining an appropriate append period and overwrite protection period. Now you can assign scratch media tapes to these media sets.

Now head back to the Job Setup tab.
If I were you I would create a new policy. One Policy should be able to cover your needs. Within the new policy create the templates you require - perhaps a monthly, weekly, and daily? Sorry I sort of skimmed your post. define the schedules for each. Make dailies run Mon to Fri or whatever (perhaps set these as incremental or differential to save tape space), then Weeklys (full) to run Sat - Sun perhaps? I have it so when a monthly job comes around (first weekend of the month for me) it runs instead of the weekly. This can be defined in the Template rules.

Next up create selection lists for all servers you are backing up then add them all to the Policies.

Let me know if this is or isn't what you were looking for!

Gruk

Oh right, disclaimer -
The above advice is just what I would do, don't hold me accountable if things don't work out nicely - and if your are changing settings, keep track of what they were before you changed them!