Firestreamer tape efficiency

The technical support forum for Firestreamer (the virtual tape library).
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jmixson
Posts: 3
Joined: 06 Feb 2014, 21:20

Post by jmixson »

Our DPM server backing up the virtual SQL servers, we have the protection groups broken up by server names and we have noticed that when the monthly job runs, one virtual tape may have 88GB of data on it from a particular protection group and one virtual tape may have 88MB of data on it from that same protection group. Yet we ran into an issue where the backup jobs were waiting for free tapes but some tapes only had less than a GB of data on them yet were marked offsite ready. In this scenario, we added more virtual tapes and continued the jobs and they completed. But our concern is this is very inefficient, to have so many tapes with so little data on them and try to keep up with them all. I read in the configuration settings that you can have up to 255 tape drives per library and up to 60,000 storage slots so I assume that's part of the issue but is there a way to make the virtual tape jobs more efficient? I believe I read that the default maximum file medium size is 8TB, so there is no way to make the virtual tape consume all or close to 8TB of capacity before it is marked offsite ready?
jmixson
Posts: 3
Joined: 06 Feb 2014, 21:20

Post by jmixson »

I also read that to expire the offsite ready tapes, go to the Firestreamer console, then media, then delete each one. That will remove it from the Firestreamer library and then you can add more virtual tapes. But the Firestreamer console doesn't label the tapes as offsite ready or indicate how much data is on them so it would seem to be a manual process to copy the tape number from the DPM console and find that same tape in the Firestreamer console to remove it. Is there a more efficient way to do this?
jsf
Cristalink Support
Posts: 300
Joined: 29 Aug 2010, 09:03

Post by jsf »

Re: Tape use

It has nothing to do with Firestreamer. Firestreamer is a mere tape library. It's not aware of DPM at all. It's entirely up to DPM to use a particular tape for particular data, to the tape's full capacity or not. Please refer to http://support.cristalink.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=5 ("the best backup strategy" in particular). You can probably enable data co-location in DPM to have multiple protection groups backed up to the same tape. Please contact Microsoft Support for further detail on this matter as we cannot be more helpful.

Re: Expire tapes

Firestreamer does not "expire" tapes in DPM terms. Firestreamer, just like a physical tape library, is not aware of DPM. What you described is the process of changing virtual tapes. If you wanted to change physical tape, you would have to manually press the eject button on a physical tape library and manually swap tape cartridges. The Firestreamer Snap-In is an equivalent of the hardware panel of a physical tape library. However, you can automate the virtual tape change process with a custom PowerShell script, where you can do whatever you want. The script, for example, could periodically read the current DPM state and update tapes in Firestreamer as necessary. Please see Sample Script and Automation.
Best regards,
John Smith
Cristalink Support
jmixson
Posts: 3
Joined: 06 Feb 2014, 21:20

Post by jmixson »

Thank you John.
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