Importing tapes - media pool issue and retention?

[Jam_Z_3]

Hi everyone,

We are currently undergoing some Importing of old tapes, however I have noticed a few things -

As the media was already a member of Scratch pool it would produce a media pool error when attempting Phase 1 of the import, so I had to Change the media to be in another pool, in this case into a pool called None. Then Phase 1 would work.

The tape is then assigned and therefore cannot be moved into another pool. I could not Change it into the correct pool before Phase 1 as I had no idea what was on the tape to start with. Will performing a Phase 2 on this tape change the tape into the correct pool, or is it locked into None forever? (I have read tech doc 248093, but that implies deassigning the tape to change the pool, but will this undo our Phase 1 import and we'll have to start again?)

Also, I've noticed that after Phase 1 the media will expire in just 1 week (as shown by bpmedialist), yet in the manual it should have a expiry date of the import date + retention of the images - does this only get set after a Phase 2 is completed on that media?

Thanks,
James.

[zippy]

James,

Were these tapes or tape barcode numbers part of this system, meaning have they ever been in use for backups?

It sounds to me that you are importing them as if you want to save the data on them.

If you don't need the data on them and wish to reuse the tape, I would change the bar codes and import the tapes a fresh new fatty's.

If you have some that are already imported you can expire them now and re-asign (sic) them.

############### cut here ##################
for i in 000979 001024 000953 000847 000787 000968 000988 000736 000788 000810 001102 001084 000960 000854 000874 0
01154 000851 000985 000908 000720 000857 000814 000878
do
bpexpdate -ev ${i} -d 0
done


JD

[Jam_Z_3]

Hi James, thanks for the help,

These tapes were accidentally manually expired it appears, but we need them back in the database for future restores. So, they are all currently members of the Scratch pool and contain valid data.

We need to Import them, but have them in the correct Pool as they can't stay in the None pool really. The problem is I have no idea what Pool to Change them to before starting Phase 1, where I can identify the tape, so chose the None pool, which will need changing in the future, if possible. Also, the retention after Phase 1 says 1 week, which is not correct as they were month-end saves, and had a 1 year retention from the policy which did the backup.

I was wondering if Phase 2 corrects this. I am running v5.1 MP3, Windows ver if it helps.

James.

[Jam_Z_3]

After just reading the commands manual, am I right in assuming that Phase 2 possibly performs a "bpexpdate -recalculate" to correct the retention of the images on the media to be the current date + retention period?

This still leaves the issue of the Pool. Perhaps I only have two options -

1. Make a new pool named Imported and place media in this which is to be imported,

2. After doing a phase 1, expire the media again, then add the media back and into the correct pool, then perform phase 1 yet again.. then phase 2 finally.

?

Thanks, James.

[Doctorski]

HI James,
You could carry on with the imports, then duplicate the images into the required volume pool, then expire the originals.

I believe duplication with retain MPX is far quicker than redoing the import process

[Yasuhisa_Ishika]

I also think so you have to import twice. Or do like this:

1. check media contents(this causes real medium read)
> bpmedialist -mcontents -h media_server -m media_id -L

2. guess what pool this medium was in with policy name and schedule label.

3. change volume pool before import

[Jam_Z_3]

Thanks!

It is a shame that NetBackup doesn't just let you reassign media to another pool as and when you need to, it is all only an entry in a database after alI guess.

Thanks for the help everyone.
James.