Media Sets and Families

When backing up to multiple devices, the terms media set and media family are used to describe the components of the backup. A media family is all of the media used by a single device. For example, a backup set consists of four tape devices, and each device requires five tapes to be loaded to complete the backup. All five tapes used by tape drive one are considered a backup family. The first tape in the family is referred to as the initial media, and the subsequent tapes are referred to as continuation media. All of the media families combined are referred to as the media set. Therefore, in the preceding example, the media set would consist of 20 tapes. It is recommended to use the MEDIANAME parameter of the backup command to specify a name for the media set. This associates the multiple devices as members of the media set. The MEDIANAME can then be referenced in future backup operations.