Backup to specific tape 1

[01backuper]

Hi there,

Using NetBackup 5 with Solaris 9. How can i make a Manual Backup job using a specific tape? What i mean, is this:
Say i create a new barcode labeled tape and assign it to the Scratch volume pool. (e.g. tape 000001) How can i tell Veritas to use this tape instead of any other one it considers appropriate for the job. The robot has an 8 tape capacity, and i believe it's not wise to remove all of the other 7 tapes just to make the robot use the one i want. Sorry if it sounds stupid already, but i don't consider myself an expert in Veritas..

Thanks in advance

 

[Vela]

One way you could do this is create a volume pool with that tape in it. You could then point the backup policy at the new pool and it should work.

 

[Vela]

Actually you'd have to create the volume pool, then move the tape from whatever pool its in by default into the pool you created.

Another way is that you could, before introducing the tape to Veritas at all, is create a barcode rule so that when the tape is entered via 'vmupdate', it will go directly to the new pool.

 

[01backuper]

Thank you for your reply, i will certainly give this method a try, possibly today if time permits.
I also have a harder problem to solve: There's this Oracle database which is located at our dbase server, and we take daily backups of it using RMAN. This is a procedure where a db.sh backup takes about 30 - 35 minutes to write the backup to tape, and another 5 minutes to write the arch.sh backup to tape. When RMAN starts working, i can go to the Activity monitor of Veritas NetBackup, and simply observe the sequence. In order to start this backup, i have to switch to Oracle user, and hit the backup_db.sh command. Likewise, in order to start the archive backup, i give a backup_arch.sh command. When Veritas was installed, the technician set up the policies in a way that supposedly this task was automated through the NetBackup environment. Actually, the schedule gets activated, and again, "supposedly" the Oracle backup is being done. However, although it is trying to write the necessary files to tape, it ends up writing 0 kilobytes of data. The weird thing is that in history it doesn't appear to have any error messages, and no red icons next to the jobs. That's why i keep taking backups of Oracle using the RMAN scripts. Doing so is not a problem, because our database has no activity during the weekends (no transactions). However, i would also like to be able to write these backups to specific tapes, just like with the first question i had. My goal is to be able to have a seperate tape for Oracle backup, one for every day of the week.
Does anyone believe this is possible?

Thanks once again!

 

[Vela]

Setup a volume pool in netbackup and call it rman or whatever.

The backup selection tab should point at the script that kicks off the rman script on the client-> /usr/openv/netbackup/bin/[rman script .sh]

You can find this setup info on the veritas support website in the netbackup for oracle install pdf.

That would be better since you have to link netbackup with rman as well and it outlines the entire process.

 

[01backuper]

Gee, thanks Vela, you're a life saver!
Your tips got me going (creating a new pool and assigning tapes to it). It also worked with RMAN.

Thanks once again