Tape Backup information

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Tape Backup information

Sponge-592981

Ten Centuries

Points: 1225
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June 9, 2008 at 7:01 pm

#122593

Hello,
In my experience there is a huge disconnect between the backup teams and the sql DBA's. I do not know if my tape backups are being done or not so I would like to investigate and audit my backup team.
I would like to know if the company uses Vertias NetBackup (3rd party vendor) to backup your tape, is there anyway I can query some information from the system tables to be able to see if tape backups failed for the run or not?
I found one store procedure that checks the tape backup log file , however I have not been able to test yet. I recall that one way you can check whether or not your flat .bak file has been backed up or not is file properties in advanced option and see if the ready for archive box is checked or not. This will tell you whether or not a tape backup has occurred. I may be wrong on this , however I remember someone writing a store procedure that checked this option.
Please help lead me to the right direction.
ReshadIT@hotmail.com

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Vivien Xing SSChampion Points: 12297 More actions · Answer 1

I am also interested in this topic.

"...I recall that one way you can check whether or not your flat .bak file has been backed up or not is file properties in advanced option and see if the ready for archive box is checked or not. This will tell you whether or not a tape backup has occurred."

--> Is checking the file properties good enough to prove the backup occurred?

--> Tape backup occurred really means tape backup succeed?

Vivien Xing SSChampion Points: 12297 More actions · Answer 2

Seems 'archive' attribute is the one to work on.

"if you back up the files to tape, the tape archive application uses the 'archive' attribute to determine which files need to be copied to tape. Once the file has been copied, the tape archive application will remove the archive attribute, so that it does not copy the file to tape again"

-- Quote from red gate forums.

also refer to: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb727010.aspx

Sponge-592981 Ten Centuries Points: 1225 More actions · Answer 3

Like always these technicalities get me every time. I will try to be careful of my wording 🙂 So what I can learn from this is the archive bit is simply intended to be used to indicate whether a file has been copied or not.

Thanks,