Converting entirely from LTO3 to LTO4
I have a Windows 2008 R2 server running Netbackup 7.5.0.7 with a Storagetek L700e attached. Its 10 LTO3 drives are going to be replaced with 20 LTO4 drives. After the upgrade I will no longer need to write on the LTO3 tapes but I may need to read them until they expire (two weeks after the upgrade). I plan to remove the LTO3 media from the silo and only put them back in if a mount request comes up.
I have a few questions about the upgrade:
Q1) The current media – the LTO3 tapes - are all ‘hcart3’. I want all newly inserted media – the LTO4 tapes – to go in as ‘hcart’. How do I tell Netbackup how new media should be designated?
Q2) When the LTO3 drives are removed and the LTO4 drives are put in their place I would expect they should configure as ‘hcart’. Is that correct?
Q3) The Storage Unit in the policies is called ‘L700e’. It uses the ‘hcart3’ density/media type. I think all I need to do here is change the ‘L700e’ Storage Unit to ‘hcart’. Is that correct?
Is there anything I have missed to have all the policies start using the new LTO4 media in the new LTO4 drives? The old LTO3 media would only be mounted if I submitted a restore request.
My 2c:
Media Type Mappings is greyed out because this is for ACSLS robots only.
So, these are the steps that I would follow:
On the day of the tape drive replacement, do the following:
- Delete all hcart3 Storage Units
- Delete all hcart3 tape drives (no need to delete the robot if same robot will still be used)
- In Media GUI, select all media that are in the robot, right-click and select 'Move' to logically move all tapes in the robot to non-robotic.
- Deactivate all media servers
- Shut down master and media servers
- Wait till after hardware changes have completed.
- Check that all LTO3 media is removed from the robot and that LTO4 media (with L4 suffix on barcodes) is loaded in the robot.
- Boot master and media servers. (Because all media servers are deactivated, no backups will kick in)
- Check that zoning is done for new tape drives. Do Persistent Binding using the HBA tools on media server(s).
- Check devices at OS level on all media servers - ensure LTO4 drives are seen and drivers are loaded. (The assumption here is that you will have multiple media servers as no single server will be able to stream that many drives)
- Run 'scan' (...\veritas\volmgr\bin) on all media servers to ensure that tape drives repond to scsi-commands
- Activate all media servers
- Use Device Config Wizard an firstly select the media server that is the robot control host. Complete device config and Storage Unit Creation.
- Use Device Config Wizard again, select rest of media servers. Complete device config and Storage Unit Creation.
- You will see that tape drives and STU(s) are automatically added as hcart (because of NBU Device Mapping).
- Inventory the robot. The L4 suffix on the barcode will ensure that media is added as hcart.
- Update Storage Unit(s) in all backup policies.
- You are now ready to test/run some backups.
To restore from old LTO3 media:
add tape to the robot, Inventory, then change one of the tape drives in NBU config to hcart3.
Run the restore.
Change tape drive back to hcart.
Hope this helps.