How to Read a decommission Media Server Medias

[Liew_WK]

Hi All,
Any one know method of read media write by a decommission Media Server but without run through pre decommision media server tasks as stated http://support.veritas.com/docs/230047

I know, it is possible to import to another storage domain & copy to another media then import this copy media back into original storage domain.

Thanks.

Liewwk

[Bob_Breitzman]

Unfortunately there is no other way.  The media will need to be imported as the master server (or any media server) is not aware of the images on the piece(s) of media.  Thanks, Bob

[Rakesh_Khandelw]

If tapes are still active, you should be able to run bpimmedia command to list what's on particular tape.

If you have decomissioned media server only, but the images are still active in your catalog, you can find what media tapes were used and that's the only way to find out what's on the media you have from decomissioned server. It will not provide you the real data but can provide you some information.

If your existing server does not know anything about the media you are bringing from other/decomissioned environment, only way to read media is to import it and for import you do not need to do it twice like you have mentioned in your original post. You can import it directly to the NBU environemnt you want to unless you have different requirement or currect environment does not have drives for the same tape technology.

[Liew_WK]

Hi Rakesh,
Noted thanks but I do not have luck where my final backup domain do not have same tape technology.

[Omar_Villa]

Hi if u still have the media server alive, you can try this and you will be safe, if not, is a good process for any media server been decommisioned.

1.  Determine which tapes on the Media Server that are being de-commissioned have active images that have not expired.  The easiest way to do this is to run the bpmedialist command with the following options:

Note: Use -l to get one line of output per tape.
bpmedialist -mlist -l -h <media_server_being_de-commissioned>

2)  Select another Media Server or the Master Server to inherit the tapes from the Media Server that is being de-commissioned and update the appropriate NetBackup internal databases.  This will update the mediaDB files on both the old and new Media Servers and also update the images database on the Master Server. Since the mediaDB files are binary files, they can only be updated by this program, they cannot be updated manually. To update these databases, the bpmedia command must be executed with the following options for each tape identified by step 1:

bpmedia -movedb -ev <media_id> -oldserver <media_server_being_de-commissioned>
-newserver <media_server_to_inherit_media>

3)  Enable restores of the inherited images on the new Media Server  (which was determined in the previous step) by adding a line to the bp.conf file in the Media Server that will be inheriting the media. Add the following line to the bottom of the bp.conf file:

FORCE_RESTORE_MEDIA_SERVER = fromhost tohost

where fromhost is the Media Server that was used in the previous step for the -oldserver parameter and tohost is the Media Server that was used in the previous step for the -newserver parameter.