Forum Discussion

Khanmoh's avatar
Khanmoh
Level 3
2 months ago

How to prevent tape should not move in default NetBackup pool when tape becomes full.

Dear's,

I need your support that when a tape becomes full in the daily, weekly and monthly backup pool, it is automatically moved to default NetBackup volume pool. If want to prevent this automatic movement, what steps need to perform?

8 Replies

  • Khanmoh 

    What version of NetBackup are you running? Windows, Linux, Unix?

    Are you using a scratch tape pool for your backups to pull from and assign to a specific tape pool for retention purposes?

    Typically, a scratch pool is created and all empty/new tapes are assigned to this scratch pool. When a backup runs, say the weekly backup and it uses a tape_weekly pool, when the backup starts, it looks for a tape already in the tape_weekly pool. When it doesn't find one, it will check the scratch pool for a tape to use. It would take a tape from the scratch pool and assign it to the tape_weekly pool for the weekly backup to use. Let's say that the weekly backup job has a 90 day retention. Once all images on that tape have reached expire date, then the tape_weekly tape is automatically put back into the scratch pool to be used once again.

    Please provide more details so we can better help.

    • Khanmoh's avatar
      Khanmoh
      Level 3

      Thanks DPeaco for your prompt reply.

      NetBackup 10.3.0.1 is installed on 5260 Flex appliance.

      Yes scratch pool is created and when require scratch media it moves in daily, weekly and monthly backup volume pool but when media becomes full on these pool its automatically moved in NetBackup pool. So I want to prevent that when media becomes full it should not move in NetBackup pool.

      • Nicolai's avatar
        Nicolai
        Moderator

        Hi Khanmoh 

        A full tape stays in the volume pool it's assigned to until it's free again. A tape doesn't move volume pool when it's full - that contradict default Netbackup behavior.

        /Nicolai 

  • Hi,

    As Nicolai said, the tape handling in NBU is that only emtpy/new or expired-so-free tapes are moved around pools automatically eg a tape from your daily pool is moved back to the scratch pool.

    I'm in NBU since version 4.5 and I've never seen such a behavior.

    When a tape gets assigned to a pool it stays in that particular pool until all images are expired.

    I will try that in the lab tomorrow, assign a tape to the pool "TESTPOOL" and duplicate some images to that tape, afterwards I change the pool to the NetBackup pool and try a restore.

    I think the restore will likely fail since I remember some like "requesting volume pool.." in the job logs.

    I would definitely open a support case since that sounds like a bug.

    Can you update to 10.4?

    Please provide the output from the following command:

    #/usr/openv/netbackup/bin/goodies/available_media
    And the bp.conf maybe there are some strange settings, file is at /usr/openv/netbackup/bp
    conf

    Kind regards,
    Christopher Meyerweck
  • hi Khanmoh 

    Are you mixing schedules and volume pools ? A schedule is just a name to - typical a name indicating activity like daily or weekly whereas a volume pool is a way to separate data on tapes. E.g. accounting data and engineering data. 

    Pls do a vmquery -m media_id on a tape before its full and after its full ?

  • or are you mixing volume pools with volume groups? Tapes can move between volume groups, that is more of a physical location thing. 

    You can not make pool changes to tapes with data once they are allocated to a volume pool.