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Gadit's avatar
Gadit
Level 3
8 years ago
Solved

how to get a Vault list tape from specific backup

Good morning.

I hope you can help me.

We are use a Vault system to tapes, these tapes are a secondary backup of a primary backup.

The primary backup expires in 6 months, but the vaults expire in 10 years.

The primary backups from Oracle's databases are make with RMAN and in netbackup policy we executes a script that launches the RMAN processes.

The Primary backup is copied to tape, and this tapes stay inside the robot, the secondary backup is a duplicated from de primary Copy, this second copy is saved into a tape and carrie on to another location.

A database's backup are approximately between 8 and 12 tapes.

When we need to restore a backup older than 6 months, we have to use the Vault tapes.

RMAN requests the ID_Tape from the primary copy.

We need to know if there is any command that tells us which copy of Vault is relevant to that primary ID_Tape.


for example:

  Primary backup tapes            Vault tapes
        
LTOBD123                                LTOBD800
LTOBD153                                LTOBD567
LTOBD238                                LTOBD999
LTOBD279                                LTOBD545

knowing the date of the backup, the ID_TAPES of the primary copy, and the name of the client, how can I get the list of respective Vault tapes?

Thank you very much for the help!

  • Marianne's avatar
    Marianne
    8 years ago

    My 2c:

    There is no 1-to-1 relation between copy1 tapes and vault tapes.

    Vault duplication copy images to a destination STU and pool.
    It is therefore possible that the images on LTOBD123 will not be identical to images on LTOBD800.

    Before copy 1 images expire, bpimagelist -L will show copy 1 and copy 2 media id's.

    After copy 1 has expired, copy 2 automatically becomes the primary copy and information about tape used for copy 1 is removed from the image database.

    After the 6 months when copy 1 tapes have expired, you can use bpimagelist command to list the tapes for the Oracle backups. Something like: 

    bpimagelist -client clientname -d mm/dd/yyyy -e mm/dd/yyyy -media -pt Oracle -U
    (where -d is start-date and -e is end-date)

    Please note that -e is note the date when the policy ended. 
    The -d and -e options will give a list of all Oracle backups started during the period.

    HTH

     

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  • Marianne's avatar
    Marianne
    Level 6
    8 years ago

    My 2c:

    There is no 1-to-1 relation between copy1 tapes and vault tapes.

    Vault duplication copy images to a destination STU and pool.
    It is therefore possible that the images on LTOBD123 will not be identical to images on LTOBD800.

    Before copy 1 images expire, bpimagelist -L will show copy 1 and copy 2 media id's.

    After copy 1 has expired, copy 2 automatically becomes the primary copy and information about tape used for copy 1 is removed from the image database.

    After the 6 months when copy 1 tapes have expired, you can use bpimagelist command to list the tapes for the Oracle backups. Something like: 

    bpimagelist -client clientname -d mm/dd/yyyy -e mm/dd/yyyy -media -pt Oracle -U
    (where -d is start-date and -e is end-date)

    Please note that -e is note the date when the policy ended. 
    The -d and -e options will give a list of all Oracle backups started during the period.

    HTH

     

    • Gadit's avatar
      Gadit
      Level 3
      8 years ago

      I know that command.

      But the problem is that more than 100 tapes are recorded in a week. So determining which tapes are vaulting and which tapes are normal backups is difficult.

      Now we have an EXCEL record with that information, but I was wanted to automate the process with some report or something similar.

      I think after reviewing and reading the documentation, at least for the moment it is not possible!

      thank you very much for your reply.

      • watsons's avatar
        watsons
        Level 6
        8 years ago

        Actually what Marianne suggested can work with a little more effort to script the bpimagelist and other commands.

        A vaulted tape has additional attributes such as:

        - vaulted date
        - offsite volume group

        So from bpimagelist output you can get the list of tapes for a single image, then using the list perform "vmquery -m" to get the above attributes and you will be able to tell which tapes are vaulted.

  • Marianne's avatar
    Marianne
    Level 6
    8 years ago

    I think I understand what Gadit is asking - 

    The issue is with RMAN that stores the media id's of the 1st copy. 
    The problem is that when copy 1 expires, RMAN still only knows about copy 1  media-id.

    This is why the request is for a 'utility' to map copy1-media-id to copy2-media-id.

    In my view, this is not possible as there is no one-to-one relation between copy1 and copy2 tapes.
    Copy1 image for a particular day may be appended to a previous day's tape that continued onto another tape, while the duplicate may have fitted onto a single tape.

    Best would be to script bpimagelist proactively to list all copy1 and copy2 tapes for each image done on a daily basis, or else when a restore is needed after copy1 has expired, run bpimagelist -media to list tapes needed for restore.
    I'm pretty sure that is what most other users do with duplicated RMAN tapes.