move tape from tape library

This is a Bad news / Good news kind of thing ...

Bad news - NO you cannot do what you want. You should purchase more tapes.

Good news - IF you can determine some tapes you do not need, you can EXPIRE the backups and NetBackup should automatically move them to scratch.

Bad news - if you do this, the data is GONE and will not be available so get approval in writing before expiring anything.

Best advice - monitor your scratch tapes and purchase enough so you have enough on hand to handle needs until more can be purchased - if your purchase cycle is one week, make sure you have at least a weeks worth of tapes. If it is one month, you need a months worth. I get a daily report ( cc OPS ) with listing of scratch tapes - OPS has standing orders to open a sev 1 ticket to me when we get below a set amount.

If you have new unused tapes that you are able to use, you'd just eject existing tapes and insert those new tapes. However, if you do not, I would not suggest expiring old data to make space for new data unless you've gotten approval from management.

If a restore requires a tape that is outside of the tape library, you'd eject a tape to make room for the required tape. Once it's inserted and you've ran an inventory from NetBackup on the tape library, it would be able to be used for that restore.