Grandfather-Father-Son Tape Rotation

[manatee]

ever since i've started with backup, i've used this GFS tape rotation scheme (more info on https://www.backupassist.com/education/bsg2.html) but that was during the time when one can say, this backup goes to this physical tape/s. now with tape libraries and all, one cannot control which tapes will be used for certain backups. only a set of tapes using pools. so i have implemented the GFS tape rotation by creating a Daily, Weekly, and Monthly pool. so far it works as the backup policies i updated uses the correct pool depending if it's Daily, Weekly, or Monthly. now my question is, how to rotate the tapes? for example, from the Daily pool, this consists of several tapes how would i know which ones was used for Monday or Tuesday or Wednesday? or should i just leave the Daily pool tapes in the tape library? but what about the weekly pool tapes? do i also leave them in the tape library until they expire and gets reused? or is my tape rotation outdated and not applicable to today's backup strategy? EDIT: i will use the "Data Expiration" column to know when to insert back one of the daily tapes. only if there is a notification system from NBU to tell you when life will be a piece of cake.

[Marianne · Accepted solution]

NBU Vault option is made for tape rotation, offsite management and tape return. Without Vault option (separate licenced option and configuration , there are several reports to help with tape management. In NBU GUI under Reports, look for Tape Reports. The most helpful report (IMHO ) is Tape Summary Report with Verbose option selected. This will give you tape expiration in next couple of days, weeks, months. Not sure why you need to know which tapes were used on particular days (unless you want to send tapes offsite for safekeeping), but you can use Tape Written report. IMHO, NBU knows which tapes were used for which backups and will prompt for the right tape in case of restore. Whether to take tapes out of the library or leave them to be appended to and expire naturally is a business decision. Some customers leave tapes in the robot and others eject on a daily basis and send tapes offsite for safekeeping. Daily ejects will increase tape usage because you will need to remove partially filled tapes. Another useful report is available_media. This must be run from cmd in ...netbackup/bin/goodies folder and can be redirected to output file, e.g. available_media > /tmp/media.txt To make life easier, configure a Scratch pool and move all unassigned tapes to this pool. Daily, Weekly, etc pools will draw from Scratch when there are not sufficient tapes in the relevant pool. Expired tapes will also go back to Scratch ( but only if they were previously in Scratch pool ). So, all expired, unassigned tapes must be manually move to Scratch as a once-off exercise. HTH PS : You never replied to attempts to help over here? https://www.veritas.com/community/forums/can-i-tell-nbu-use-particular-cartridge

[Nicolai · Accepted solution]

You are better of throwing a bunch of tape at Netbackup and let it manage the backups.

The approach on knowing "Monday is on this tape" is a thing from the past in my view. The strategy may work for small shop, but once yore backup exceed more than one tape (or even using multiple retention) its become a heavy task to manage.

My advice is to keep your backup server and robot in a alternate another location from source data, and leave as many tapes in the robot as possible.

Br Nicolai

[manatee]

hi all,

ok so far, as a carry over from the 20th century of managing tapes, i have implemented a Daily, Weekly, and Monthly pool.

oh there's also a Yearly pool which benefited me a lot this 2015 year end backup.

and today, i have returned two tapes which belonged to the Daily pool as they are due or expired already.

i see that the "Tape Summary" is a much, much better way to find tapes that are due to expire. thanks for pointing that out.

yes we have a need to send tapes offsite hence the need to know which tapes where used. fortunately, our requirement only need the Monthly and Yearly tapes so that lessens the number of tapes to eject.

i only have a 30-slot (2 are used by the cleaning cartridges) so probably until end of this month i will have to eject some tapes whose status is full and not expired. as i still have remnants of tapes that don't belong to the new pools i created.

Vault? i will need to look into this.

@Marianne, so you mean to say even if a tape is already expired, unless i move them manually to scratch pool NBU will not touch them?

EDIT: i have a media that is as of today is expired but when i load it back to the library, it went back to the Daily pool. won't NBU reuse this where it is since it's already expired? or must i have to manually move it to Scratch pool first to be reused?

[mph999 · Accepted solution]

Only tapes that started in scratch,  will be returned to scratch when they expire.

Eg.

Scratch > Some other pool > Scratch

If the tape starts in a pool other than scratch (EG. you manually move it, when it is empty to NetBackup pool) it will always stay in NetBackup pool

[Marianne · Accepted solution]

...  so you mean to say even if a tape is already expired, unless i move them manually to scratch pool NBU will not touch them?

No. That is not what I meant.

If a tape is in Daily pool it will stay in Daily pool - with or without unexpired backups on them.
(This is true if the tape was not previously in Scratch pool.)

My advice is to add a Scratch Pool.
This is where you will add all new tapes and move expired (unassigned) tapes to.
(You will have to do this once for existing tapes as soon they expire.)

A Scratch pool has the advantage that you do not have to battle to ensure that each pool have sufficient media.
Any pool without blank (unassigned) tapes will draw from Scratch when a new tape is needed.

If a tape started out in Scratch pool, it will return to Scratch pool once all images have expired. 

See http://www.veritas.com/docs/000063473

[manatee]

i load all new tapes to Scratch pool (not my default) manually to replace tapes that have status "Full".

based on above suggestions, even though the expired tape loaded in Daily pool, because it started from scratch pool it will eventually be returned there once ALL images on the tape expired.

for those catching up and as a summary, i'm rotating my tapes based on an old tape rotation scheme of Grandfather-Father-Son where Grandfather is the Monthly, Father is the Weekly, and Son is the Daily.

i have created this three pool Monthly, Weekly, and Daily (Daily tapes will be left inside library as well as Weekly; for a total of 11 tapes) and am only sending to remote site the Monthly tapes.

btw, i have also the Yearly pool for year end backups which was also sent offsite.

[Marianne]

Expired tapes in Daily pool will only be returned to Scratch if the 'Previous Pool Name:' field shows Scratch.

If that column does not show by default in Media GUI, you can see this field with nbemmcmd command:

nbemmcmd -listmedia -mediaid <media-id> 
or as per Martin's command to list all media ( how to expire tapes in catalog?) : nbemmcmd -listmedia -allrecords 

If this column is blank or something else, you will need to move Unassigned (expired/new) tapes manually to Scratch as a once-off exercise.