Cleaning Tape Labels...

[sof19]

Hi, 

I'm wondering, do I need  a sepecial Labels for my cleaning tapes, or I can use a regular Labels. Does the labels affect Auto cleaning and

manual cleaning or not ?

Usually I do clean my tapes manually by accesing my library. I would like to setup au cleaning, but I have only a regualr Labes.

[Marianne]

Similar discussion over here: https://www.veritas.com/community/forums/cleaning-bar-code-clnxxx-not-available-still-cleaning-media-be-used

[Nicolai]

Yes, you do.

Don't use a normal barcode on a cleaning tape. I have seen examples before where a cleaning tape had a normal barcode attached. Since the tape was first of the scratch list Netbackup mounted it every time it needed a tape, resulting in 3 days of missed backup before eventually the error was discovered.

If the tape had a clean barcode netbackup would never mount it as a data tape.

I do not make any difference if you let Netbackup clean the drives or uses the robot auto clean feature, either way I strongly recommend in using  cleaning barcodes.

[sof19]

Thank you for the link.

[sof19]

Thnak you Nicolai. I did order special cleaning tapes. The problem that I'm facing now is that I'm using SCALAR i500 liabrary, and it has 2 partitions, one is called Physical Library and the other one is called Libaray_1. I did reserve two cleaning slots, becasue I have only 2 cleaning tapes, but somehow I can't see my cleaning tapes om my Netbackup software.

After talking with Veritas tech support, they request me to move the cleaning tapes to the 2nd partiotion which is Libarary_1. Now I get stuck on how to move these tapes from partion to partition.

thanks, 

[Marianne]

Cleaning slots in the robot are not presented to the backup software. In these slots the tapes must have correct labels. If you configure NBU to do the cleaning, then you can put the cleaning tapes in normal backup slots with backup labels BUT you MUST configure them as CLN_xxx that matches drive density and in NONE pool (as per the link above). CLN labels are still the best so that there is NO confusion.

[Nicolai]

Marianne is right - robot cleaning uses a reserved slot to avoid interfering with the backup application usage of tapes.

If using robot cleaning feature, the reserved slot will be used for both partitions. The robot simply listen to the clean signal from the tape drives (there is a serial connection between the drives and robot) and mount the cleaning tape when "clean" signal is seen.

If using Netbackup cleaning, you need to have 2 tape, once in each partition located in the normal slot - not the reserved slots.