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LTO3 to LTO4 Tape Migration

rweiss
Level 2

Is there an easy way to do an LTO3 to LT04 tape migration ?  In other words, if I have over 400 LTO3 tapes that I want to duplicate to LTO4, is there an easy way to do that ?  Thanks.

 

Ryan

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Accepted Solutions

Marianne
Moderator
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Another 2c from my side....

If your management really requires you to duplicate 400 tapes, they should provide you with additional resources:
1. Manpower - a dedicated resource who will only perform duplications for the next couple of weeks.
2. Media server - Best to dedicate a media server that will ONLY be tasked with duplicates
3. Tape drives - as many source (LTO3) and target (LTO4) tape drives that can be dedicated to this task and presented to the dedicated media server. (I would request 2 LTO3 and 2 LTO4 tape drives connected/zoned to 2 different hba's on the media server to ensure performance.)

'Duplication person' can then break the task in to smaller 'chunks'. Choose 5 - 10 tapes and run 'Images on media' report (bpimmedia).
Add all image-ids to a text file. 
Run bpduplicate to '-dstunit <destination storage unit label>' with -Bidfile parameter (text file created above).
If you have more than one media server, you will need to specify the dedicated media server as 'alternate read host'  (-altreadhost <hostname>) to prevent duplications across the network.
Add '-primary' to change new copy to primary.
Retain multiplexing as de-multiplexing will slow down the process considerably.

Duplication person to verify successful duplication of all images on LTO3 tape before expiring source media.

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9 REPLIES 9

sdo
Moderator
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Unfortunately there is no easy way. It's probably not worth scripting it either. I think your best move is to do it via the GUI by hand.

rweiss
Level 2

How would you even do it from the GUI ?  Just 1 tape at a time ?

mph999
Level 6
Employee Accredited

I would just duplicate by media ID

bpduplicate -id <media ID> -dstunit <destination STU> -dp <destination pool>

Be sure to use a different pool than the one the tape is in you are copying, NBU can be a bit stupid and try to duplicate a tape 'to itself' if you use the same pool.

Shaf
Level 6

Try this

 

https://www.veritas.com/community/forums/how-duplicate-netbackup-media-tape-backup-another-media-tape#comment-4355731

Marianne
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Why not simply keep the LTO3 tapes until they naturally expire? LTO4 tape drives can read LTO3 media. Simply change the density of one LTO4 tape drive to match LTO3 media for the duration of the restore.

Michael_G_Ander
Level 6
Certified

If you for some reason cannot use Mariannes execellent suggestion, the easiest way is to make a script that run through the LTO3 tapes one by one and use bpduplicate to duplicate them to the LTO4 tapes. Be aware that even with a script it it is usually a good amount of work.

The standard questions: Have you checked: 1) What has changed. 2) The manual 3) If there are any tech notes or VOX posts regarding the issue

Marianne
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Another 2c from my side....

If your management really requires you to duplicate 400 tapes, they should provide you with additional resources:
1. Manpower - a dedicated resource who will only perform duplications for the next couple of weeks.
2. Media server - Best to dedicate a media server that will ONLY be tasked with duplicates
3. Tape drives - as many source (LTO3) and target (LTO4) tape drives that can be dedicated to this task and presented to the dedicated media server. (I would request 2 LTO3 and 2 LTO4 tape drives connected/zoned to 2 different hba's on the media server to ensure performance.)

'Duplication person' can then break the task in to smaller 'chunks'. Choose 5 - 10 tapes and run 'Images on media' report (bpimmedia).
Add all image-ids to a text file. 
Run bpduplicate to '-dstunit <destination storage unit label>' with -Bidfile parameter (text file created above).
If you have more than one media server, you will need to specify the dedicated media server as 'alternate read host'  (-altreadhost <hostname>) to prevent duplications across the network.
Add '-primary' to change new copy to primary.
Retain multiplexing as de-multiplexing will slow down the process considerably.

Duplication person to verify successful duplication of all images on LTO3 tape before expiring source media.

sdo
Moderator
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Partner    VIP    Certified

And some more questions to ask oneself before commencing... There's the issue of how 'manage' any duplication failures, i.e. which images did get duplicated, and which did not?  How to work out what to re-run?  How to confirm that all required images have been duplicated?  Are the original images multi-plexed on LTO3 tape?  If so, do you want to keep the original multi-plexing?  If so, how to achieve this?  If so, does the GUI have the option to retain original multi-plexing, or is it only the CLI command that has this option?  Is the "copy number" of all of the original images on LTO3 the same "copy number" - if not, you could get in to a horrible mess with different copy numbers for different images neing on different media types - be careful here... check your original image 'copy numbers'... i.e. understand the nature of the data sets that you are dealing with before you start.

And what about images that span media?  I can't remember what happens for these:

1) Images that starts on a media and is spanned... do these get duplicated by a command to 'duplicate by media id', or are they skipped?

2) Images that end of a media (but do not start on same media)... do these get duplicated by a command to 'duplicate by media id', or are they skipped?

 

John_Snodgrass
Level 4
Partner Accredited

I agree with Marianne's first suggestion.  Use LTO4 tapes for your new backups, and let the LTO3 roll off natuarlly since they can be read by the LTO4 drives.  The only tapes you may want to consider migrating are any with really long or infinite retention.  We have lots of customers that have older tapes (previous generation tape technology) that just leave them offsite while the current backups are using the new tapes/drives.

For the problem with images spannig across tapes.  Could you setup a disk pool to duplicate several tapes to then duplicate it back to the LTO4 and let it handle it that way?