Newbie Question-Archiving&Expired Media

[keendean]

Hi,

I've been using NB 5.1 Enterprise for a few months now, my question is very simple-I ran weekly full backups from the start of the install that went off site, the weekly's had a retention of a month. A few of the tapes I sent off I now want to use for a monthly snapshot, I know exactly what tapes went off site, NB now thinks the images have expired, so I can't see exactly when or what was written to the tapes using reports. Is this because the tapes are offsite, or more obviously because the images have expired?

If/when I introduce them back into the library, will they automatically goto the pool they came from, or will they goto the scratch pool? Will I need to catalogue the tape some how so NB knows about it? I'm guessing then I can run reports and grab some history to it. To stop the tapes with expired images been written to can I freeze the tape to prevent it being over written or MPX.

Where do I stand with these tapes that have expired images are they as useful as a tape that does not have expired images? Any pointers to a newbie appreciated.

 

[Stumpr]

If the images on the tape have expired then you can use the "import" process to read the tapes and re-add the metadata into the catalog. When you import a tape the retention will be the same as the original. for instance if the Weekly tape had a retention of 1 month then the newly imported tape will have a retention of 1 month from the day that the import process is actually run. Today's date + 1 month will be the new expiration date. If you want to change the retention of the newly imported tape to 1 year then you will need to use the command "bpexpdate"

If you do nothing for the tapes and enter them back into the library then they will be placed into the scratch pool and re-used. You then will never be able to access the original weekly image that was placed on the tape a few months ago because they will be overwritten.

Bob Stump
Just because the VERITAS documentation states a certain thing does not make it a fact and that is truth.

 

[keendean]

Thanks! So it's going to make it quite hard when trying to plan for rotational backups and offsite storage.
My tapes coming on site with expired images I need them to goto a specific pool, but as the images are expired there going to goto the scratch pool. NB seems cool if you want to fire and forget but if you need some human intervention life gets difficult, either that or I need more exp on the product which is the more likely cause