Hi,
We have an issue on one of our environments where we want to restrict the max total number of drives that any duplications from any media server can use is (ie. no of drives available -1 )
Environment
All servers are Windows 2008 R2, Master and media server 1 are NetBackup 7.6.0.4, media servers 2 & 3 are 7.5.0.6 (to be upgraded shortly)
1 x Master / Media server , 26TB san provisioned MSDP disk pool
3 x Media servers, each with 15TB san provisioned MSDP disk pool
1 Quantum library with 6 LTO5 tape drives, available to all servers via FC
There are 4 tape storage units, 1 per media server, each with max concurrent drives = 6, all are set to multiplex up to 32 streams/drive
There is a tape storage group, containing all 4 tape storage units
Problem
Initially (about 2 years ago) all backup policies went to SLP , so backup to MSDP then Duplicate to tape, various policies pointing to 1 of the 4 media servers, duplications to the tape storage group.
As data volumes grew we had issues with disk pools filling, so now we put some of the larger SQL backups directly to tape, leaving the MS-Windows, Unix and VMWare backups to use the SLPs.
Problem we have now is that we duplicate so much data that the support guys are constantly having to abandon duplications to allow tape backups to grab a tape drive, as all 6 drives are nearly contantly in use.. Ideally we need more tape drives but getting the customer to pay is another matter completely !
So what I'd like to do is limit the total number of drives available to duplications to 5, therefore leaving 1 drive always available to backups, unfortunately I see no way of restricting a tape storage group to 5 drives.
I can create additional tape storage units with a max of 5 concurrent drives, but that just means each individual media server can only duplicate to 5 drives, so with 4 media servers all drives will still be used.
I could also create additional tape storage units with a max concurrent drives of 1 , but that'll mean only 4 tape drives being used for tape duplications, and a max of 1 per media server....again not what is required..
Any advice appreciated !
Also, on the SLP parameters (now available on the console - thanks for that !) ...
Tape (and Disk) resource multiplier values are set to 2 - what do these settings do ?
Many thanks