Example 2. Backing up to tapes on a weekly rotational basis

Consider the following scenario:

• You want to back up several machines to a tape device attached to Acronis Backup Storage Node.
• You want to create full backups on Fridays and incremental ones on Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays.
• You want to use two tape sets, each one to be written over a week. A set of tapes from a week that has just passed should be ejected and replaced with the other set which will be later overwritten in turn. This way of working can be useful if the number of slots of your tape device is only enough for backing up during a week.

Sequence of actions

1. Load one of your tape sets into the tape device slots.
2. Perform the fast inventorying with the Move newly detected tapes from the 'Unrecognized tapes' or 'Imported tapes' pools to the 'Free tapes' pool check box selected.

   Result. The loaded tapes are in the Free tapes pool. If some of them are sent to the Acronis pool or a custom pool, this means the tapes contain backups you did earlier on this machine. Move such tapes to the Free tapes pool manually if you don't need these backups.

3. Decide whether you want to back up to the default Acronis pool or to create a new pool.
4. If the chosen pool is not replenishable, move all of the loaded tapes from the Free tapes pool to it.
5. Eject the loaded tape set. Repeat steps 1, 2 and 4 for the other tape set.
6. Create a managed vault. When creating the vault:
   • In Drives, select the entire tape device. This will enable simultaneous backup of the machines via different drives, if your tape device has more than one drive.
   • In Tape pool, select the pool where you will back up to (the Acronis pool or the newly created one).
7. When creating a centralized backup plan:
   • In Items to back up, select the machines you want to back up.
   • Choose the created vault as the backup destination.
   • Select the Custom backup scheme.
   • Specify the schedules for full and incremental backups.
   • In Clean up archive, select Using retention rules, and then click Retention rules. Specify the retention rule to delete backups older than 1 week.
8. Each Friday, before a new full backup runs, eject the loaded tape set and insert the other one. If your tape device contains a barcode reader, perform the fast inventorying. Otherwise, perform the full inventorying.

Result

The tape sets will be used in turns. After a tape set is inserted, its tapes will be sequentially overwritten.