Is the Tape allowed to save multiple backup without overwrite the old one?

[Former Member]

Gentlemen,

Please advice in the following scenario

Br*tools already configured on production system and the customer bring a tape with 800 GB and requested to store the daily online backup on the same tape for the whole week because the tape space allowed for that,

Is that is accepted?

And if that was allowed in the case I want restore or recover the backup from this tape how can select the specific version on the tape, which contains 6 copies of the week,

From my point of view that I define the tape name while I restore the backup, this is the only parameter available to be selected.

Furthermore, how to manage this tape to know free spaces on tape, please advice.

Regards,

Ahmed

[Former Member]

Dear Fidel Vales,

Thanks for your help and cooperation,

Also, I thank all those who watched and sought to answer the question

Regards,

Ahmed

[Former Member]

Thanks for all of you for fast reply; really I appreciated your cooperation.

Regarding Mr. Markus reply as he mentioned:

the BR*TOOLS will forward to the correct backup on the tape it´s selected.

Thatu2019s great, but how to selects the backup manual, let me to explain it in more details:

That Iu2019ll have backups foru201D Saturday, Sundayu2026 & Thursday u201C, in case I want to restore Tuesday backup, my question is how to select this specific backup from tape via BR*Tools, please advice.

Regards,

Ahmed

[fidel_vales]

Hi,

In this case, I think Markus answer is not correct.

BRBACKUP will not store more than one backup in a tape.

Of course, I can be wrong, but I do not recall seeing that option in the documentation.

The following can be found on the latest documentation (netweaver 7.0)

[Volume Management|http://help.sap.com/saphelp_nw70/helpdata/EN/fc/e186a3a23d8743abad8a4cc2957e1e/content.htm]

The tape volumes for the Oracle database are overwritten again at each backup or archive by BRBACKUP or BRARCHIVE. These tools never use the space remaining on the tapes after a backup has finished. New tapes have to be inserted each time you make a backup. 

So, I do think it is not possible and not a good idea. It is a recipe for disaster

[former_member204746]

I believe that BRBACKUP/BRARCHIVE do not support multiple backups on the same tape. Why? because it puts a "label file" at the beginning and expects to backup right after it.

only notable exception, if you run BRBACKUP with option -a, it iwll backup the DB and also backup the archives right after.

[Former Member]

I agree with with Eric here. For all I know it's not possible to have more than one label file on a tape.

But it is still possible to use brbackup and in the end have more than one backup on one tape.

But for this you will have to use a brbackup to disk first, and use operating system tools to save the backup files to tape.

The original poster was not very clear in this regard.

[markus_doehr2]

Is that is accepted?

If that is valid or not is a decision the customer makes

If the tape is broken (a tape hardware problem) he will need to go back a full week and to redo log recovery. Technically possible but it takes time...

And if that was allowed in the case I want restore or recover the backup from this tape how can select the specific version on the tape, which contains 6 copies of the week,

the BR*TOOLS will forward to the correct backup on the tape it´s selected.

From my point of view that I define the tape name while I restore the backup, this is the only parameter available to be selected.

You select a backup if you restore, no?

Furthermore, how to manage this tape to know free spaces on tape, please advice.

Since your tape uses most likely hardware compression it´s hard to say a specific point how much space is left.

I personally would not do a full backup only on tape, I would backup to disk and use an external software (depending on the OS tar, cpio or msbackup) to backup that disk to tape.

Markus