Duplicating 9940 to LTO4

[Mohmec]

Hi,

we need to duplicate a few hundred 9940 tapes to LTO4 media and am looking for the best and most efficient way to copy the tapes.

My other question is:

9940 are based on NBU 6.5 and this has to be duplicated to LTO4 based on NBU 7.6. Will there be any issues? 

I will be using vault. Is this the most efficient method? Also, what is the time estimate to complete about 100 tapes. 

[Mark_Solutions · Accepted solution]

I assume you mean you have a 6.5 media server attached to the 9940 and a 7.6 media server attached to the LTO4 library?

You should be OK but obviously there is no support for anything 6.5 these days.

To be as fast as possible you would match the number of LTO4 drives with 9940 drives so that vault can do its stuff

Maybe for the period of doing this exercise you may want to allow different retentions on tape so that all the different retention periods can go onto a single set of tapes.

You could also restrict the maximum number of partially full media in the target pool you are using to make sure that it uses tapes as efficiently as possible

As for how long it will take ... to be honest i wouldn't even like to guess .. you could do the maths if nothing else is likely to run during the whole process but even that is likely to not be too accurate!

Hope this helps

[Mohmec]

Thanks Mark. 9940 are very old. They were backedup when NBU version was 6.5.5. 

[Marianne]

bpduplicate in a script where you loop through a list of media-id's is probably a better plan than vault.

Similar discussion here: https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/forums/script-duplicate-old-tapes

... what is the time estimate to complete about 100 tapes.

How long is a piece of string?

Too many factors that play a role.
Are all tape drives attached to one media server?
How many read and write tape drives?
How many tape drives per hba?
Buffer sizes tuned for optimum read and write performance?

Ensure that bptm log folder exist on media server doing read and write, then use bpduplicate to duplicate one 9940 to LTO4. 
Check bptm log and Activity Monitor for performance stats.
That should give you an idea of what to expect.