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Perm to Tape

  • 1 February 2021
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Userlevel 3
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How can I just make backups to tape Perm, once a month? Can I set retention to 0 days?

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Best answer by Mike Struening RETIRED 4 February 2021, 16:11

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10 replies

Userlevel 7
Badge +23

Before I can answer, I have a few questions to narrow down (and to make sure your screenshot is accurately configured for your needs):

  1. Are you looking to make another copy of the job on a Tape and keep that forever?
    1. If so, do you only want specific Fulls (like the last of the month, or First of each week), or ALL Fulls?
  2. Are you looking to only keep FULLS forever, or the Incrementals as well?

Based on the above, you can:

  1. Create a Selective Aux Copy to ONLY copy the full backups (either All, or a specific criteria, like First of the Month)
  2. Set the retention as you provided, with the Basic Retention set to the minimum time you want the Incrementals to be around.  This will age off Fulls in around 22 Days, unless the Full is the last backup of the month for a given subclient (note: the most recent Full is considered the last of the month, just in case)

Let me know if these tapes are your Primary Copy (i.e. the backup from the Client goes right to tape) or if this is an Aux Copy.  With that answer, we’ll need to see how long you want the non-Monthly Full (based on your screenshot.

Thanks!

 

Userlevel 3
Badge +6

Hello, and thanks. Our setup is using Netapp (Everyday Primary Snap (7 days) > Vault (60 days) > end of month, to Tape. 

  1. We want specific FULLS (end of month) perm to tape. That’s it. No increments. 

Right now, its both backing up to tape for 30 days in addition to another backup to tape for infinite. (Basically doing the tape jobs twice.) The jobs are huge, so its consuming too much tape and taking too long to run the tape jobs. So we want to stop the 30 days to tape part of the policy and just make it do perm to tape at the end of the month.  

Userlevel 7
Badge +23

Ok, perfect.  you even answered my next question in the last paragraph!

So here’s what I would do:

  1. Set the Extended Retention as you have in your screenshot on the current 30 days to tape, though set the basic retention to 30 days (2 cycles is fine; it only specifies how many NEWER Fulls you need for that subclient before a a job can age).  Stop running the second Tape Copy (the infinite one).
    1. This will result in All backups (Fulls and Incs) being retained for around 36 days (because the Incrementals also need to be 30 days old before their Full can age).  Your Monthly Fulls will be held forever.
    2. You WILL end up with a mix of jobs on the tapes with some Incs and non-monthly Fulls simply because the monthly Fulls are on the same tapes.
    3. However, you don’t have to run the jobs twice, using twice the media (albeit temporarily)

As mentioned in point 2, the above is not without issue, because you’re basically copying ALL jobs to the Full, and only keeping the last full of each month forever, but essentially holding up the entire tape.

Let me know if that answers your question.  the good news is that you can set the extended retention, then run the Data Retention Forecast and Compliance Report to see how the tapes are now affected,

Userlevel 5
Badge +9

Hey there @tsmtmiller,

The current selection of ‘Extended’ retention along with the copy name: 3. Monthly Tape, implies that your 30 days retention copy is moving everything to tape, and then forcing the last FULL for each month to be retained indefinitiely.

 

This will have pros and cons, the most obvious PRO that it writes off to tape just the once (as part of the monthly backups). However the CON here is that you loose alot of capacity within that tape after the incrementals and unwanted FULL backups age out.

Creating a 4th Copy to tape as a ‘Selective’ copy as Mike mentioned, will mean we can consolidate our selective full backups on tapes more efficiently, however as you noted does mean we have to write off to tape twice.

 

However, if your happy to forego the incrementals on tape entirely, from the General tab of that copy you’ll see a ‘Selective’ check box.
Ticking this will enable the Selective Copy tab, where you make those changes much like your ‘Extended’ retention. Stumbled across this which might help here: (17:31 they cover Selective Copy Settings).

 

 

   

 

Cheers,

Jase

Userlevel 5
Badge +11

The screenshot you sent looks like a synchronous copy, not a selective copy. If you only want the end of month jobs, follow Mike’s steps above which is to create / convert to selective copy first, configure it to be picking monthly jobs only, then set the retention appropriately. 

 

With retention on a selective copy, you can technically set it to 0 days 0 cycles but extended retention set for Infinite on Monthly. This way works however could get a little confusing when looking at retention from the storage policy quick view.

Instead, it would be clearer if you set the basic retention for this monthly selective copy to be infinite to begin with and don’t even need to use the extended retention options.

Userlevel 3
Badge +6

Ok, perfect.  you even answered my next question in the last paragraph!

So here’s what I would do:

  1. Set the Extended Retention as you have in your screenshot on the current 30 days to tape, though set the basic retention to 30 days (2 cycles is fine; it only specifies how many NEWER Fulls you need for that subclient before a a job can age).  Stop running the second Tape Copy (the infinite one).
    1. This will result in All backups (Fulls and Incs) being retained for around 36 days (because the Incrementals also need to be 30 days old before their Full can age).  Your Monthly Fulls will be held forever.
    2. You WILL end up with a mix of jobs on the tapes with some Incs and non-monthly Fulls simply because the monthly Fulls are on the same tapes.
    3. However, you don’t have to run the jobs twice, using twice the media (albeit temporarily)

As mentioned in point 2, the above is not without issue, because you’re basically copying ALL jobs to the Full, and only keeping the last full of each month forever, but essentially holding up the entire tape.

Let me know if that answers your question.  the good news is that you can set the extended retention, then run the Data Retention Forecast and Compliance Report to see how the tapes are now affected,

 

Are you saying to set it like this to keep 30 days then every 30 days it will keep the Monthly full forever? This is not intuitive to me. I only want at the end of the month to copy all fulls perm to tape. 

 

Userlevel 3
Badge +6

The screenshot you sent looks like a synchronous copy, not a selective copy. If you only want the end of month jobs, follow Mike’s steps above which is to create / convert to selective copy first, configure it to be picking monthly jobs only, then set the retention appropriately. 

 

With retention on a selective copy, you can technically set it to 0 days 0 cycles but extended retention set for Infinite on Monthly. This way works however could get a little confusing when looking at retention from the storage policy quick view.

Instead, it would be clearer if you set the basic retention for this monthly selective copy to be infinite to begin with and don’t even need to use the extended retention options.

 

Thanks, how about just setting the Basic Retention to 2,555 days 1 cycle which is 7 years then removing the Extended Retention altogether? 

Userlevel 3
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@Mike Struening 

We have the backup copy set to only monthly jobs as below so its not copying every full job. As I asked Jordan, how about just increasing the basic retention to several years and just remove the Extended Retention? 

 

Userlevel 7
Badge +23

You certainly can just set Basic Retention to 2,555 days and 1 cycle and you’ll get the same effect as using the Extended Retention option since you ONLY have Monthly Fulls on this copy.

The only time you’d notice a difference is if somehow the Backup Selection were to change (say, to All fulls) and now you have ALL fulls being kept that long.  Using Extended Retention sort of future proofs you to any change (I don’t want to assume you are the only person with access to make changes).

The beauty is that you can always make adjustments and rerun the Data Retention Forecast and Compliance report to see what the affect will be (just be sure Data Aging won’t run during this examination).

Let me know if that clarifies for you!

Userlevel 3
Badge +6

Thanks, I think this is the best answer to keep things simple. I will check with compliance but from my experience, seven years nobody will even know the data exists. I think if the jobs were smaller, I could run the extended retention rules but with almost 100TB I think the original set up is consuming too much time and tape. 

 

You certainly can just set Basic Retention to 2,555 days and 1 cycle and you’ll get the same effect as using the Extended Retention option since you ONLY have Monthly Fulls on this copy.

The only time you’d notice a difference is if somehow the Backup Selection were to change (say, to All fulls) and now you have ALL fulls being kept that long.  Using Extended Retention sort of future proofs you to any change (I don’t want to assume you are the only person with access to make changes).

The beauty is that you can always make adjustments and rerun the Data Retention Forecast and Compliance report to see what the affect will be (just be sure Data Aging won’t run during this examination).

Let me know if that clarifies for you!

 

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