Forum Discussion

bytejunkie's avatar
bytejunkie
Level 2
10 years ago

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.

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  • 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.

  • pool or group?

    I'm of the opinion that it doesn't matter so long as the admins don't do something dumb. but i could be wrong.

     

    though, if i suspend the media, i dont need to separate it out.

     

    thanks for the reply.

  • Pool and Group are two different attributes.

    Assigned tape with non-expired data cannot change Volume Pool.
    Volume Group can be changed for non-expired tapes, but is associated with location and will be updated when tape is put back in the robot.

    Only when images have expired can the Volume Pool be changed.

  • Did the OP mean volume pool not group? Not sure, but you are spot on.

     

  • What about LTO WORM tapes ?

    Even thru manager want you to "just pull the tape from robbot" I would still vote for a cutom retention level e.g 10 (9 is infinity)  and custom volume pool  to identify those tapes.

    It does makes life a lot easier, for one off it should not take up too much space in the Netbackup catalog ( or use cat_export)

  • If you just pull it from the library, how will anyone know whats on it 10years down the line? The image will have expired, any emails or notes about it will likely be gone. Your boss is creating future problems here, no doubt about it. 

  • The "DoNotWriteTo" idea is not bad, but you can also just close the write-protect tab on those tapes and eventually NBU will freeze them.

    FYI, we created a couple of extra volume pools for specific uses when removing tapes from the library permanently:

    • Litigation - These tapes are ones that had to be sent to lawyers and such.  We keep a spreadsheet with the barcodes, dates we duplicated them, and the name of the person we handed them to. 
    • BadMedia - When a tape is no longer working for any reason, it helps the auditors to identify which ones we had to destroy.

    These keep the tape barcodes in sequence and no one asks what happened because a barcode is missing from our lists.

    • Kleber_Marra's avatar
      Kleber_Marra
      Level 4

      So, Lock the tape physically there for sure you will not use it for recording but only for restore.