BE2012 Issue with media in media vault - duplicates in DB when inserting in tape - no way to move it out of the vault

[SFietzek]

I'm trying to do a restore job from a tape that is located in a media vault. All tapes are LTO3 and have a barcode like nnnnnnL3 (with nnnnnn as a 6 digit number). Now I have the following problems:

If I enter a tape in the drive that is logically located in a media vault the media appears a second time with the same name in the database (all media view for example). It seems that the tape is not recognized correctly as beeing the one BE knows already.
Example: I have a tape '000046L3' which is located in the media vault 'external' and attached to a media set. Now I put this tape in the drive and do an import. BE now shows a new tape '000046L3' as a new temporary media in the drive. If I take a look in the all media view I see to tapes with the name '000046L3' but different media ids.
This happens to all media that are located in a media vault. All media in the offline media do work well.

So I thought this must be a bug and I only have to move the media from the vault to the offline media and everything is fine. But I couldn't find a way to manually move a media out of a media vault to the offline media. In BE 2010 I could drag the media out of the vault but in 2012 this function seems to be missing. I can move the tape to another vault but there seems to be no way to get it out.

Now I have 2 problems and am not able to do the restore. Any help would be appreciated.

[Colin_Weaver]

I believe (but could be wrong) that if yor run an inventory job after teh import that these fixes it.

[SFietzek]

Colin, you are right. After doing an inventory of the tape BE recognizes the tape correctly but I think this is not the way it should work.

In my opinion there are to things that should be considered as a bug and fixed:

1. If you enter a tape that is stored in a media vault the tape is not recognized as the one BE knows already but as a new one with the same name. Doing an inventory of the tape fixes this for this single time.
BE should recognize the tape correctly using the barcode. I'm pretty sure this worked in BE 2010.

2. At the moment there is no possibility to move a media out of a media vault manually to the 'Offline Tape/Disk Cartridge Media' via GUI. You have the option to move a media to another vault but not out of them.
As a workaround this function is working in the CLI: Get-BEMedia '000001L3' | Move-BEMediaToMediaVault -MediaVault "Offline Tape/Disk Cartridge Media"
But it should be working in the GUI, too.

How do I get this information to Symantec in the hope this will be fixed? Can you do this, Colin? Or is there a way for me to push the information to the appropriate people?

[Colin_Weaver · Accepted solution]

I have bought this up internally including the fact that I belive this is broken behaviour based on how I thought BE 2010 used to work. At least one internal tester has reproduced the condition (but also had never tested the same thing in 2010 to confirm things)  As such I belive it will be acknowledged as some form of known issue shortly (although I may not be able to update any forum threads for a couple of weeks as I will be out of office.)

We do have another option for a workaround

As well as an "Import" Job option in the BE 2012, you should find that in the same menu there is an option called "Inventory after Import" If you use this instead of the Import option I belive it should work nearer to as expected. The BEMCLI command for Submit Import Media Job also has this option as a switch.

I would be interested to know if this works for you as I don't have acces to a library with a mailslot so can't check it.

[SFietzek]

I testet the "Inventory after Import" option and it does work as a workaround. It's the same as importing the media and then doing the inventory. Just two steps in one click.

Just to be sure: Did you also mention my second point that the manual media movement out of a vault is missing in the GUI? Would be nice to see this reimplementet.

So far, I'm going to mark your post as a solution and hope to see this issue fixed soon. Thanks for your support.

[Colin_Weaver]

I didn't specicially mention that was it somethign that was possible on BE 2010 or are yoy talking abouth some operatiion that either an import job did anywway, or that the Vault Rule Wizard used to take care of?  Kinf do of need clarification if I am to take that bit further as well.

Although the first bit with the import/inventory issue appears to be a possible defect - hence my internal queries about it. The second bit sounds more like an enhancement request, as such are you aware that if you post an Idea on the Connect Forums, instead of a forum thread, this counts as an Enhancement request and gives other Connect customers chance to indciate that they woudl leik to see the same featire (as it has a voting option)

As such submitting an ability to move media between vaults manually might be worth submitting as an Idea.

From the Create Content menu select Idea to start the process.

[SFietzek]

This was definitely a function that was available in BE2010. In BE2010 you has a tree viee of all media set, media vaults, etc. You could click on a media vault to see all tapes inside. Then you could use drag and drop to manually drag it to another media vault or the offline media pool. I'm 100 percent sure this worked.

In BE2012 you can't use drag and drop anymore. You have to open the vault (or another view where you can see the tape media) right click on the tape and there you have the option to move it to another vault. But in there you only see all other manually created vaults but not not the offline media pool (meaning the media is in no vault at all).

The vault rule wizard is working in like in previous versions as far as I can see. If a media is ready to bring back from a vault you can use the wizard to update the vault and move the media back. But if you want to move a media manually that is not ready (and so not available in the wizard) you can't move it using the GUI. You have to use the CLI as described above or you put the tape in the drive and do an inventory. This way BE "sees" the media is back and put's it in the online media pool.

Though it's a feature that is gone with BE2012 I don't mind creating an idea for that.