Imported expired images worked, but now what?

[Yair]

Hi all,

1st of all let me give you details about my environment:

Win server 2003 64 bit

Netbackup 7.0.1

I had to restore a few images that were expired accidently.

so i ordered the tapes from offiste.. and followed this procedure:
http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=TECH43584

"Once added to the tape inventory, use the media section of the gui to right click and 'change' the volume to a writeable pool other than your 'Scratch' pool. Creating a new pool called 'Import' or the like, will prevent any backups from using these media."

So i've opened a new Volume pool especially for the expired tapes i wanted to restore - and moved them to a volume pool called "imports"

now that i've completed importing them and i see that the images that were expired now appear in the restore gui - i wanted to move the tapes back to their original Volume Pool.. which was "NDMP_Offsite" but now it gives the following error when i try to move the tapes to a different volume pool:
"Change pool of ____ failed. cannot change media pool of an assigned media(91)"

Also, the tapes are marked as "Imported" instead of Active.

Am i missing something? was i not supposed to move it to a newly created Volume Pool like the article suggested? cause now i can't move it back to the original Volume pool.

Thanks in advance!

[Andy_Welburn]

is that if you put them into a valid pool used for backups & they are unassigned then there is the possibility, however remote, that NetBackup will attempt to use them for backups before you get the chance to complete the import procedure, thereby losing the data that you are trying to restore.

You could've write-protected them beforehand (could still cause you issues if NB loaded one of these tapes but at least no data would be lost) or just ensured that no backup jobs were scheduled to run whilst these tapes were in the library if you wanted them in their "original" pool.

Unfortunately, as you've found out, once media is assigned then you can no longer move it to another volume pool.

[Marianne · Accepted solution]

The media does not have to be in the original pool to be able to do restores.

IMPORTED status is 100% correct. No more backups can be done to media with this status. Once all images have expired, the media will be Unassigned and returned to scratch.

Why do you want to move it to a different pool? Best to keep IMPORTED media in a separate pool as a reminder that these tapes are not available for regular backups.

[Yair]

I thought moving it back to it's original volume is only natural, since those are tapes that belong to a volume pool that is my LTO4 NDMP offsite pool, also they're from a yearly backup, that is supposed to be kept for a large number of years, so it's not gonna expire anytime soon, that's why i wanted to move them back to the original volume pool.

But i guess leaving them in Imports volume pool ain't that bad, as long as they work if i need to restore from them.

[Andy_Welburn]

especially if you subsequently have to import more media - do you use the original "import pool" or do you create yet another if they are totally unrelated to your original imports - could lead to possible confusion down the line, although NetBackup doesn't really care where they are as long as your labelling is correct & you know where to find said media!

Only way around this now would be to look at duplicating your imported media, such that the duplications are now in the 'correct' volume pool.

[Yair]

Well i don't plan on importing any more media.. unless (god forbid) this type of accident will happen again.

How does duplicating works exactly? does it mean i'll need a different set of tapes?

Thanks!

[Andy_Welburn]

within Catalog - search for the images you wish to duplicate & essentially copy same to another set of tapes.

See the section"Duplicating backup images" in the Admin Guide:

http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=TECH135525

[J_H_Is_gone]

Eject tapes

write protect

expire tapes

put back in robot

re-import

now they are in the correct pool.