From: woessner@uiuc.edu (Bill Woessner)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.novell
Subject: Re: Arcserve volume exclusion & tape naming
Date: 13 Nov 92 19:06:10 GMT
Organization: Illinois Cooperative Extension Service

In article <1992Nov9.161946.17030@elroy.jpl.nasa.gov> fod@elroy.jpl.nasa.gov (Frank O'Donnell) writes:
>From: fod@elroy.jpl.nasa.gov (Frank O'Donnell)
>Subject: Arcserve volume exclusion & tape naming
>Date: Mon, 9 Nov 1992 16:19:46 GMT

>Recently we began using Arcserve for server backups on our NW
>3.11 server.  The hard disk is divided into two volumes, SYS and
>DATA, that have about 150 megs between them.  In addition there
>is a CD-ROM mounted as another volume.

>We decided that, rather than using a more complex archiving
>scheme, it would be most convenient to us to do a complete backup
>of SYS and DATA each night, appending to the end of a single 1.2-
>gig tape that we would leave in the drive all week.  Each week we
>would replace the tape and format a new one.  After about four
>weeks we would recycle the first tape and use it again.  So at
>any given time we would have tapes of nightly full server backups
>for the past month or so.  We have this set up as an "unattended
>job," as this seemed the only way to get the tape cycling scheme
>we preferred.

>At this point I'm wondering two things ...

>1)  When our CD-ROM was offline, we were able to set up the
>server backup as a single job.  However, when we brought the CD-
>ROM back up, we found that Arcserve proceeded to back it up after
>doing SYS and DATA, and there seemed to be no way in the menu to
>exclude the CD-ROM (or any other volume).  As a workaround I
>created two jobs in the "unattended jobs" menu, one to do SYS and
>one to do DATA, and timed them five minutes apart so they execute
>sequentially.  Is there any way to combine them in a single job
>and exclude the CD-ROM volume?

None that we have been able to find.

>2)  Is there any way to set up an unattended job without
>specifying the name of the tape to write to (i.e. to accept
>whatever tape is in the drive)?  If we give our four tapes
>different names (week_1, week_2, etc), it is then necessary to go
>in and edit the job to reflect the new tape name when we change
>tapes.  The only other way around it I can see is to give all the
>tapes the same name ("server_backup") and distinguish them by
>what is written on their labels.  This, however, seems to open
>the door for some prospect of confusing the tapes.

You can change the mode to append instead of overwrite.  That will then 
allow you to place an asterick in the tape name field.  Note that you will 
then have to format the tapes as you load them then.  A still more wierd way 
of doing it would be to create more jobs that themselves only ran once every 
4 weeks.  I haven't tried this last idea, but it might work if you were 
really against formatting once a week.  I prefer to do it that way anyway- 
just in case I forget to change the tape- last weeks backup won't be 
overwritten- I will just overflow onto another tape


--------------------------------------------+  The difference between
Bill Woessner                               |  school and a jail is
Software Manager                            |  that in jail they don't
Illinois Cooperative Extension Service      |  tell you what books to
University of Illinois   w-woessner@uiuc.edu|  read. -- G.B. Shaw