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How can I determine if netbackup is performing cleaning?

gkman
Level 5

Hey,

I don't remember what article I followed but I inserted a cleaning tape to the robot, and created a barcode rule, setting it to HC_CLN. it is now showing up in 'none' volume pool like I understand it is suppose to. (the robot itself is unaware of the cleaning tape)

I can see it has 50 cleaning remaining, which means it haden't performed any cleaning yet. It has been over two months since I had inserted it.

1) is  HC_CLN a HCART cleaning tape?

2) how often does netbackup perform cleaning? is it a policy I should create? 

thanks for the help.

1 ACCEPTED SOLUTION

Accepted Solutions

Marianne
Moderator
Moderator
Partner    VIP    Accredited Certified

Correct - HC_CLN is HCART cleaning tape.

What is the density of your tape drives? 
HC_CLN can only be use for hcart tape drives, not hcart2 or hcart3.

If there are no issues with tape drives, then it is quite normal that drives will not generate 'Needs Cleaning' TapeAlert.

TapeAlerts can be seen in bptm log on media servers (if the log folder exists) and in OS System logs.

If drives need cleaning and can for some reason not be done, NBU will report an error that may result in drive being DOWN'ed.

 

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Marianne
Moderator
Moderator
Partner    VIP    Accredited Certified

Correct - HC_CLN is HCART cleaning tape.

What is the density of your tape drives? 
HC_CLN can only be use for hcart tape drives, not hcart2 or hcart3.

If there are no issues with tape drives, then it is quite normal that drives will not generate 'Needs Cleaning' TapeAlert.

TapeAlerts can be seen in bptm log on media servers (if the log folder exists) and in OS System logs.

If drives need cleaning and can for some reason not be done, NBU will report an error that may result in drive being DOWN'ed.

 

StefanosM
Level 6
Partner    VIP    Accredited Certified

to add to Marianne's post,

The drive will not ask for cleaning unless it has many read or write errors, but some drives require cleaning after a specific number of TB reading or writing. If the drive needs cleaning it will report it threw tape alert and netbackup will mount the cleaning tape.

Do not clean the drive on a scheduled base. Cleaning tapes are not smooth tapes and overdoing cleaning my damage your drive.

If the cleaning remaining is 50, then the cleaning tape has not been used yet.

gkman
Level 5

thanks for the clarification. very helpful.

Marc_LHeureux
Level 4
Partner Accredited

tpclean is also a useful command.

tpclean -L will show you when the drive was last cleaned, how many hours it's been in use since the last cleaning, whether or not there is a cleaning frequency set up, and whether or not NetBackup thinks the drive needs cleaning.

If your drives are going down, they all say need cleaning, and your cleaning tape still shows 50 cleans remain, then you can use tpclean -C to try and force a cleaning to make sure it's all set up correctly.

http://www.veritas.com/docs/000093210

 

We used to use frequency cleaning, then we switched to tape alert cleaning, now we just use library cleaning - we found it to be the most reliable, the drawback being that you have to use the library to monitor your cleaning cartridge life.