Assigning media to a host

[daustin97222]

Prior to 6.x, NBU Enterprise offered a command for assigning media to a host via the vmquery -assignbyid interface. This useful tool appears to have been disabled as we are now using the EMM.

Is there an equivalent command in the post 6.x world that will allow manual assignment of media to a host?

thanks, for any help.

[Marianne]

NBU will automatically do that when media is used for the first time by a media server. Manually assigning and deassigning causes unnecessary inconsistencies between Media/volume and image databases.

[daustin97222]

Thanks for the reply - yes I am aware of the automatic assignment. However, in this case we have many images (far too many to import reasonably) and we need to move the images. In the old days, this was pretty easy with the manual assignment interface. Right now, I can list the images just fine and these only need to be assigned to this master to be recoverable directly.

So I still need the assignbyid capability.

[Stumpr2]

Have you tried bpmedia?

# bpmedia -help
bpmedia:
  -freeze|-unfreeze|-suspend|-unsuspend -m <media_id> [-h <hostname>] [-v]
  -movedb -m <media_id> -newserver <hostname>
        [-newsvr_group <groupname>] [-oldserver <hostname>] [-v]
  -movedb -allvolumes -newserver <hostname> -oldserver <hostname> [-v]
 

[Marianne]

The other command to change image ownership is with bpimage:

bpimage -id <media-id> -newserver <new-media-server>

do you have media servers that were imporperly decommissioned?

[daustin97222]

movedb won't work - the images are moving between masters.

I am guessing from the responses that manual assignment is no longer supported for the field - though we know that Symantec sells the service so they have internal tools.

Thanks for any help.

[Marianne · Accepted solution]

Now I understand your requirement!!

Are you aware of 'Recovery Without Import' White Papers?

The original 3-page doc: http://eval.symantec.com/mktginfo/products/White_Papers/Data_Protection/nbu_wp_replicatingbucatalogs_103003.pdf

The longer, updated version: http://eval.symantec.com/mktginfo/enterprise/white_papers/b-whitepaper_implementing_highly_available_dr_with_veritas_netbackup_01_08_13599373.pdf

bpimage will most definitely work and eliminate the need for FORCE_RESTORE..... entry.  Media will still be unassigned and will still need to be added to a pool that will NEVER be used for backups as well as write-protected.

[Stumpr2]

I have spent 10 minutes looking for that technote. Thanks!

We use rsync from our production master to our DR master for the catalog /usr/openv/netbackup/db/images

We then add the bp.conf entry

FORCE_RESTORE_MEDIA_SERVER = master DRmaster
 

[daustin97222]

Right - that' the crutch - but I can list the images and cannot restore them because the tapes are not assigned to this master. Hence the request for assignbyid. How do you get around the assignment problem? Is you DR master an alias for your existing master? (that's not an option here but would work).

thanks for any help - I am trying to find the juicy parts in the white papers.

[Marianne]

Images are assigned to a media server, not a master. A master server can be a media server as well.

If you copy images from master to master, the media server name is written in the image header.

To restore via another media server (that may be a master/media server) you can either use the bpimage command to change image ownership for all images associated with the media-id, or use "FORCE_RESTORE_MEDIA_SERVER = fromhost tohost " entry in bp.conf on a Unix Master server, or use Host Properties -> General Server -> Media Host Override  on Unix or Master server.

Have you had a change to look at the Recovery Without Import docs yet? The 1st one is a short litlle 3-page doc.

[J_H_Is_gone]

Just copy the db/images to the other master,

having already put into the bp.conf file the FORCE_RESTORE_MEDIA_SERVER lines

one for each media server in my source location as the fromhost and all tohost is my media server at the new location.

......

So copy db/images

put the tape in the library ( as per the doc that Marianne listed)

and do the restore

NO RE-ASSIGN REQUIRED.