Formatting tapes 1

[estech25]

I am new to NetBackup. I can't find any ways of formatting a tape in the Admin Console. There seems to be no visual way of doing this. Also, Whenever I start a backup from a new client, NetBackup uses a new tape in the library. This way I end up having all my tapes assigned very soon. Can someone tell me what is the logic of NBU in handling tapes and storage volumes?

 

[vm146971]

You should not have to format tapes in order for NBU to use them.

There is a paramater under host properties on the master and media servers, "allow media overwite" where you specify what tape formats NBU can overwrite, otherise NBU will not overwrite these tapes. How to configure this is explained in detail in the NBU Admin Guide.

How to erase tapes:

http://support.veritas.com/docs/273510

As far as NBU logic, when using tapes and media, I believe it will always select the least used available drive or tape first. This is all explained in the NBU Media Manger Guide, under the topic Media manager Reference Topics\How Netbackup Selects Media in Robots.

 

[lenski]

The thinking behind NB is for large systems and tape libraries. The inital start up cost in tapes may be large but should settle down once every client/job has a few tapes assigned to it. In 4.5 when a tape is expired it stays in the same pool but in 5 you can set it to return to the scratch pool. So you may see your scratch pool shrink but they can be load of tapes in the other pools. Moving spare tapes back to the scratch pool may be an option and may help you gage the useage. As said above the lest used tape is normally used for the backup, but there are other things like has the last tape used still got some free space. Drives in a library and standalone are also treted differantly. Best advise I can give is do not try and double guess which tape it's going to use and forget any thoughts you had on scriping on tape numbers.

 

[RustyMajor]

Actually, in 4.5 expired tapes will also return to the Scratch pool. I am running 4.5 FP5, but I want to say that functionality was in FP/MP3.

 

[lenski]

Not in the version of 4.5 I'm running? Returning of tapes to the scratch pool was a new feature of 5.

 

[Stumpr]

This is from the Release Notes for 4.5 FP3
4. Expired tapes are now returned to the Media Manager scratch pool
Previously, if a scratch pool is configured, Media Manager moves volumes from the
scratch pool to any other pools that do not have volumes available. Now, Media
Manager also returns any expired media back to the scratch volume pool
automatically. The automatic behavior of returning media to the scratch pool can be
disabled in the Media Manager configuration file.
For additional information, refer to the “Vault”section, item 1 on page 24.

Bob Stump
Incorrigible punster -- Do not incorrige

 

[Stumpr]

The return tapes to scratch pool feature is enabled and disabled by an entry in the
vm.conf file.
RETURN_UNASSIGNED_MEDIA_TO_SCRATCH_POOL = YES | NO
If no vm.conf file exists, the return expired tapes to scratch pool feature is enabled. To
disable it, you must create a vm.conf file, add the appropriate entry, and set it to no.

Bob Stump
Incorrigible punster -- Do not incorrige

 

[lenski]

Well so much for the last training course I went on. They said that it was only avalible from 5 as a new feature. Well thats good new anyway thanks for correcting what I had been told by big V.

 

[GreyWanderer]

With the advent of 5.0, they did away with the FP track, so many of the FP only things are now inclusive in the MP track. Which does make life simpler, too many times I heard "Oh, I thought you said FPx,no you are right, that is not available in MPx" from support.