Found Media, whats one it and who does it belong to?

[OfficeAutomatio]

Greetings,

    We have two master servers, one at our main office and one off-site and both have a tape library attached to them. Both servers are running Windows Server 2008 and running netbackup 7.7.0.

    I took over backups several months ago and am still leaning netbackup. Recently while cleaning out some storage closets we found a lot of media. I am sure that most of the media was vaulted as off-site. For a majority of the tapes (not all) when looking at the media bar code I can tell which tape was at which location.

    However this is the problem I am running in to. When I look at for example tape 000001, I do not see that tape in the media section of either netbackup master server. I would like to see what is on this tape, i.e. when it is set to expire, what server the tape belongs to, what images are on it etc. Could I use the image import process for this or is there a better way? Also does it matter which server I run the image process on? For example again. If tape 000001 was created on master server "A" but I import it in to Master server "B", can I remove it from "B" and reimport it into "A" where the tape belongs do the tape is registered on the right server's database?

Any advice would greatly be appreicated. And yes, it is a mess but one I am sure I can work through as  is about 80 tapes.

[Backup_All]

I'm no expert, I think import is your only option. It doesn't matter which server to run on. It's probably a good idea to write protect the tape just in case

[sdo]

Why do you think that you need to import?  Are you intending to actually review the contents? If there is no business reason, shouldn't you just get them shredded?  Maybe they are bad tapes, and loading them will scratch/damage your tape drives.  There is a school of thought which is... never load tape media from untrusted sources.  You will never know how many times they have been actually mounted, unless you acquire a device which read the RFID chip inside the tape cartridge.  They may have passed their "life span".

Here's a tip when you do import phase 1, you have seven days within which to perform the phase 2, before the images that are in phase 1 mode are expired again.

Another tip, when you run a phase 2, the image will acquire an expiry date of... original backup date plus your current retention level... think about this for a second... that could equal a date in the past, and so what can happen is that within a few hours your fully catalogued phase 2 imported image can expire from under your very nose again... unless you immediately reset the retention, or reset the expiry of the phase 2 imported image.  And you can only do this expiration date reset/recalculation from the CLI, and not from the GUI.

[Marianne]

About the following statement: "....when it is set to expire ...." If there were valid, unexpired images on it, then the media-id would exist on one of your masters. Another way of knowing what is on them is to run a 'Media Contents' report. This will load the tape, scan and list header info, such as client name and date of backup.

[mph999]

If the media is not in NBU, it either never was, or it has been deleted manually.

NBU will expire media, but not delete it.

If the media was never there  = no problem

If the media was there, it was purposely deleted = no problem

[OfficeAutomatio]

Hello Everyone,

   Thanks for the information and suggestions. I went thru the boxes of tapes today. I found half the box (about 100 tapes) was assigned to my second master servers. I compared the media listed on that server with the tapes in the box. For the other half I am sure they belong to the first master server even thoughtye are not listed. I can not get rid of this media or assume it is no longer valid since it is not listed in either server.

   My line of thinking is that I know at some point shortly before I got here both master servers were upgraded (both OS and netbackup versions) and the information for these remaining tapes for the 1st mater server may have been accidently deleted, I can't assume they are bad or expired tapes when I know  they were at one time vaulted. This is why I need to go thru the remaining tapes to see what is on there and when the images expire.

    So let say I do find tapes that are not expired and the media is not listed on the master server. Could I use the media import process to "re-register" those tapes with the same status and data expiration date?

[Marianne · Accepted solution]

An upgrade will never 'accidentally delete ' any tapes. And certainly not just certain tapes. Someone deleted them from NBU. Tapes can only be deleted when there are no more valid images on them. All images have expired. As I've said before, instead of using lengthy import procedure, simply use the 'media contents' report after entering the tapes back in the robot and adding them to a pool that is not used for backups (to prevent tapes from being overwritten). Once you know what is on a tape (e.g. backup of ClientX policy type YYY done on date ##### policy name AAA schedule name BBB) you will (should) know know which master the client belongs to and what retention for this client is. Chances are that backups were done long time ago and way past expiration date. You can then decide if you want to recycle/overwrite the tapes with new backups. Something else you should carefully check is media type. These may be older media type that were used in previous generation drives.

[Genericus]

100% agree with Marianne "If there were valid, unexpired images on it, then the media-id would exist on one of your masters."

IMHO, any NB admin should know where their data is at all times.

I track every tape I use, and if I shred tapes, I move them to a Volume Group I named "Destroyed" and since I generally NEVER destroy unexpired tapes, I am able to move them to a specific Volume Pool as well, also labelled "Destroyed", and I use the comment field to indicate when and why I destroyed the tape. If an auditor asks me what happened to tape 345678, I am able to clearly document to them that it was destroyed 1/1/2012 due to a bad leader pin", as opposed to having to admit I do not know where the tape is (which would be a bad thing).

At the very least, someone in your organization should have documented the removal of these tapes, otherwise, how does anybody know who has your data?

Finding a bunch of unknown tapes is only marginally less horrifying than losing them.

[OfficeAutomatio]

Thanks everyone for all the comments and suggestions. I went thru most of the remaining tapes. The images are good and the data has not expired yet. So I will proceed with the long process of importing the data backup in to its master server so that everything is cataloged. I believe that when the employee we hired did not know that the media was in storage and may have deleted the media accidently.  

[Marianne]

Again - media with valid, unexpired images cannot be deleted.

Only when all images have expired can media be deleted.

The only logical explanation is that some has deliberately expired all images on tape and then deleted them from NBU.

I say 'deliberate', because the command needs to be typed in, e.g.
bpexpdate -d 0 -m A00000

At this point NBU will display a warning and the user has to reply 'y'.

Only now can the tape be deleted.