LTO3 & LTO4 tapes together.

Now I got some new LTO4 tapes.....

What about LTO4 tape drives?

You need LTO4 or LTO5 tape drives to use the new LTO4 tapes.

The LTO4 drives and tapes need to have a different density (NBU default is hcart for LTO4) and you need to have a different Storage Unit for this new density. 
Next, change backup policies that you want to use the new drives and media to this new STU.

You can also add the two STUs to a Storage Unit Group and decide on selection criteria (details in NBU Admin Guide I) and then change all policies to use the STUG instead of specific STU.

Hope this helps!

***You need LTO4 or LTO5 tape drives to use the new LTO4 tapes.

I allready have a LTO4 tape drive. My LTO4 tape drive is in NBU set as a HCART3 device.

But now I only use LTO3 tapes, because I allready have theese tapes.

Now I have got some new LTO4 tapes. Can they coexist with the old LTO3 tapes, if I label them just as my LTO3 tapes? Will the tape drive recognize the LTO4 tapes and be able to store more data on it?

/morten

If all drives and media is configured as hcart3, NBU will try to mount LTO4 tapes in LTO3 drives.
The tape library should prevent that and return a mount error. NBU will probably DOWN the drive.

You will need to separate the LTO3 and LTO4 drives and media into different densities to ensure LTO4 tapes are only mounted on LTO4 drives.

I only have one drive wich is a LTO4 drive.

Then you can use your LTO4 tapes in the one LTO4 drive only. You need to separate LTO3 and LTO4 drives and media.

No other way.

Your hardware vendor will confirm this.

Marianne - I disagree with you one this one - But I understand the background why you saying this.

You can write in "format-1" density. So a LTO4 tape drive will be able to write in both LTO4 and LTO3 density. I have used this trick to "brake" LTO5 tape drives using LTO4 tapes to avoid shoe shining.

You can continue labeling the new LTO4 tapes with bar codes of the LTO3 series as long as the tape drives in LTO4. However the tape usage will be unpredictable because of the capacity difference.

At some time you will have to split tapes into LTO4 and LTO3 - so why not do it now. Do you want to go thru the time consuming process of  finding expired LTO4 media,  replacing barcode and performing label operation process in Netbackup?

I recommend splitting tape up (Just like Marianne did).

If you had two tape drives you cold have one tape drive in each density (LTO3/LTO4) - now you have to choose.

Hope it make sense.

Best Regards

Nicolai

Nicolai, my concern is about the LTO4 media when all drives and all media is configured as hcart3.
Majority of drives in this environment is still LTO3 with only one LTO4 drive.

You will agree with me that NBU will try to mount any media in any of the drives. 
We all agree that LTO4 media cannot be mounted in LTO3 drives, right?

Morten, I think the confusion is on how many tape drives you have total...it sounds like you have just one tape drive, and it is an LTO4 drive, correct?  You don't have any other tape drives in the IBM Tapestation?

I'm keeping out of this ...   ;0)

But he has only one tape drive - and it's a LTO4 (as I read it).