Create a Volume Group to prevent writing to a tape
Would it seem fair to do the following
1. create a volume Group with a meaningful name like 'DoNotWriteTo'
2. Add in tapes that are taken offsite for permanent retention
There is a situation where we need to set a very high and one off retention period on a couple of tapes. Rather than use the Retention levels, the boss wants to just pull them from the Library.
I'm thinking that a separate Volume Group might just prevent the tapes from being rewritten to if they are accidentally put back in the Library. An additional safeguard if you will.
Seems reasonable to me. You could logically suspend the media too with:
bpmedia -suspend -m <media id>
That means the media won't be used until all the images expire.
If you freeze the media, the tape won't be reused once images expire.
But I would personally put them in a non-used pool too.
That will not help - the moment expired/available tapes are put back in the robot, the Volume Group will be updated to robotic Volume Group and tapes will be Available to be overwritten.
Another option would be to Freeze the tapes. When data expires, they will remain Frozen and cannot be used for backups. You will have
Until someone Unfreeze them....Rather update Expiration Date. That is why the functionality exists in NBU.