Creation of Barcode rules / Media ID Generation

[rsakimoto]

I'm actually new to creation of barcode rules. This is with regards to my post about relabelling default media ID A000 to new barcode label on tape. It mentioned, before I do inventory robot on the newly labeled tapes that I have to create barcode rules. The barcode label that will be our new standard is EX. T153B1. This labeling is for our Month-end tape backup. The characters denotes as follows:
T is the name/type of backup
15 is the year identifier
3 is the month (ex. 1 to 0 and A,B as identifier of January to October and November, December)
B is the sequence identifier for backup
1 is the locator/identifier of site (we have four sites 1,2,3,4)

And for our Daily Tape backup is ex. TD1MB1
T is the name/type of backup
D is identifier for daily backup tape
1 is the week set
M is the day of the week from Monday-M, Tuesday-T, Wednesday-W, Thursday-H, Friday-F, Saturday-S to Sunday-U
1 is the locator/identifier of site (we have four sites 1,2,3,4)

Hoping you can give me insight how to basically define in barcode rules. So if its define already, everytime I insert new tape with standard label, it will automatically read when doing inventory?

Thanks and Regards

[RamNagalla · Accepted solution]

looks like your barcode is too complex..

how you will add barcode/what willl be the barcodes  for 100 tapes in the Month of April 2015? for Montly tapes... if requried..?

or 100 tapes for daily backup Monday?

barcode rules helps you to allocate the new  tapes in into the respective volume pools at the time of inventory.

If you dont have the barcode rules all tapes will go to Netbackup volume pool by default.. 

by defining the volume pools you can simply send those tapes to Scratch pool or respective pools , Monthly or Daily..

best pracitce is to define the Scratch pool and let netbackup to move them to respective pools at the time of backup..

if you have dedicated barcode for Montly and Daily.. 

set barcode for tapes starting with prefix TD and select the respective volume pool.

see page nubmer 435 , 437 in netbackup 7.6 admin guide 1 for more details 

https://support.symantec.com/en_US/article.DOC6452.html

[Marianne]

You should not try to micro-manage tapes and barcodes this way.

Monday-Tuesday-Wednesday tapes were used in ancient days when we did not have clever backup software that stored location (media-id) of backups in its catalogs.

NBU has no use for complex barcodes and lots of pools.

Even if you have one barcode range: A00..., a restore/list request for client X for Friday 2 January 2015 will look in the catalogs to tell you to load media id A00021 (for example) to do the restore.

If you try to micro-manage media this way, you will sooner or later post here for a Status 96.... 

Barcode Rule can only take the beginning of the barcode in the 'Barcode Tag' field.
So, you can only add the unique characters at the start of the barcode in this field. 

No way a barcode rule can be added for your barcodes....

[sdo · Accepted solution]

@rsakimoto - really... bar codes are for the library, and not for you.

Some multi-tennant, multi-customer sites like to use different leading identifiers for customers.  e.g.

CA0001 to CA9999 - where CA is customer A.  But that's about as far as I would take it.

Personally I wouldn't even identifty tape media labels as being either for daily or weekly or monthly.

Tape media usage is all about the logical constructs of 'pool' and 'retention' - and best practice is to not tie media usage to the physical attribute which is the media label.  I really think that you need to re-think, and possibly re-read the manual.  To go down the detailed barcode route - simply goes against all the NetBackup tries to do for you.  Three of us are saying... don't do it!

.

Oh, maybe also try not to use the 'Annnnn' range, as this usually signifies standalone media.  By all means use it, but be aware that it can sometimes initially be confusing for others.

[revarooo]

-  Three of us are saying... don't do it!

Four now!

DONT DO IT!

Use volume pools if you really need to separate tapes used for Daily, Weekly and Monthly and I wouldn't even do that, setting the retention will stop the mixing of the scheduled backups if the retentions are different and you don't have mixed retention enabled.

[sdo]

If you need more than ten thousand media per customer, then you could use hexadecimal numbering, e.g.:

CA[0-F][0-F][0-F][0-F]

...which would give you 65536 different media bar-codes per two letter customer ID.

.

If you need more than that, then you could go to 'base 36' and do:

CA[0-Z][0-Z][0-Z][0-Z]

...which would let you have around 36^4 different media labels per two letter customer ID.

[Will_Restore]

Make that five ... don't do that! 

The whole point of an enterprise product like NetBackup is to eliminate tedious work like individual tape labels.  Learn to work with Volume Pools (groups of tapes) and your day will go much smoother. 

[Andy_Welburn]

... c'mon, some one say 6 - I want to do "SEVEN!"

With your original idea you could actually do it, but you'd need a barcode rule for each and every tape in your environment and it does not seem to be catering for using more than one tape at one site on one day for any particular type of backup.

So .... don't go this route, let NetBackup do all the hard work, put your feet up & have a cuppa.

[Marianne]

LOL!!!  

[rsakimoto]

Hi All,

Thanks for all your insights. So how do I make netbackup read new tape with label on it? Yes I make use of volume pools which has volume pool for monthly and daily. Tapes are allocated there once our SLP run.

Thanks and Regards

[Marianne]

Hopefully you will not be using complex labels as per your opening post...

No idea how you would try to fit that into pools, policies and schedules.

You may want to add a Scratch pool and add a Barcode Rule to add all new tapes to Scratch pool:

Barcode Tag : <DEFAULT>

Pool: Scratch

The above will ensure that all tapes regardless of barcode tag goes to Scratch pool.
Any backup pool needing media will draw from Scratch.

To get NBU to read and add new tape labels,simply run an Inventory and select Update.
(Well, actually the robot will read the new tape label and pass the information to NBU.)

[RamNagalla]

when you do the inventory Robot will read the barcode on the tape and update to netabckup..

barcode rule is to pre defire to move set of tapes to respective volume pools.

make sure you get barcode rules in simplified mannaer

something linke TD0001, TD0002, TD0003........ TD0100 etc... 

then set the barcode rule to move the tapes that are starting with TD, to scratch volume pool

and leave rest to Netbackup.. 

[Genericus]

Add my vote as well.

The only real reason for more complicated barcode rules is multiple clients as mentioned above, or multiple tape drive type. You can use the barcode rules to specify which HCART type you assign to each drive type.

[mph999]

Ha ha ha ... my brain hurts ....