Query regarding Labeling in BE with standalone tape drive

[syed_jahanzaib]

I recently upgrading one of my File Server with BE 2014 with IBM LTO5 standalone tape drive. I have around 20 LTO5 cartridges which were previously using in windows 2003 NTBACKUP. in that ntbackup server, I was using batch file which were auto clean the disk using /UM switch and label according to day and job.

My question is that if I will insert any cartridge (which were used in NTBACKUP) ,

• B.E Will it auto clear the Cartridg or previously written data? (I have configure the option of Overwerite securty to NONE, means overwrrite allowed, is it enough?)
• How it will gonna Label the catridge? (at another BE server, I have IBM TS3100 TAPE LIBRARY and using BARCODE, so it auto label the catrige according to barcode label)
   

[Larry_Fine]

Personally, I would put bar codes on these tapes, then erase then and run a label job and enter the bar code label.
That makes it human friendly and if you ever need to put these tapes into your TS3100 library, you will have no confusion over tape labels, etc.

By default, BE will label these tapes as LTO00001, LTO00002, etc.  Which is fine, but if you ever want to put them in the library, you will get confused between LTO00001 and the bar code label that get applied.  Prevent future confusion by doing it now.

[CraigV]

Hi,

there is a thread that was started today where an OP was trying to restore data created on Server 2003 with NTbackup using BE 2014. Seems like it isn't possible at all.

Your best bet therefore would be to duplicate to disk, and then backup using BE...but doing this with 20 tapes is going to take a while.

Otherwise, if you manage to get the data imported, (Import/Catalog), it should show up as Retired or Imported media.

Thanks!

[syed_jahanzaib]

But how tape drive (standlone lto5) will read barcode? or do I have to enter them manually somewhere?

[Larry_Fine · Accepted solution]

You are correct, the standalone tape drive will not be able to read the bar code label.  But you will, and the TS3100 will.

When you run a label job on the stand-alone tape drive, BE will ask you for the desired label.  Some people enter things like "Monday1".  I suggest entering the bar code that you have already aplied to the cartridge.  This will result in the media label matching the bar code label, which will reduce human confusion.  This is exaclty what happens in your TS3100 without you having to manually run the label job.  BE will automatically label the tapes in your TS3100 library with the bar code label whenever the tapes are overwritten.

[pkh]

I have configure the option of Overwerite securty to NONE, means overwrrite allowed

You should set the OPL to either Partial or Full.  Setting it to None means that there is no protection for ALL your media, disk or tape, and you risk having them overwritten at any time.

If you want to overwrite your tapes immediately, you should associate them with the scratch media set.  You would need to inventory them after putting them into the tape drive.

[syed_jahanzaib]

Although its a long work to Label 20 cartridges, But I have done it, its Ok now.

One question regarding Media Description, If set description to some user friendly , like for Monday1, I have set media description "Monday Backup for D: drive etc etc" , but whenever I wrtie any data to the tape, the description gets erased too , Its default behaviour i guess,

Then I set the PRESERVE DESCRIPTION option, What are the advatnages or disadvantages of using this option?

[Larry_Fine]

Then I set the PRESERVE DESCRIPTION option, What are the advatnages or disadvantages of using this option?

Advantage: the description can be preserved if desired

This makes sense in some environments and doesn't make sense in other environments, which is why it is user selectable.

The "worst case" that I can imagine is that you have a tape description of "Monday backup for D:" that was "supposed" to be in "Media Set X" and actually was in "Media Set X" for many months, but then due to some weird media starvation situation, it got used for a job assigned to "Media Set Y" once and now actually contains "Tuesday backup of E:".  That is not really a bad thing, but if you always trusted the Media Description, there is now a possibility for human confusion until the media description is corrected.

Basically the best answer for that option is how you have set up your media sets and library partitions (if any).