LTO4 Medias not getting available even after image expiration

[NBU2010]

Hello All,

Setup Details : Master/Media/Cient : W2K8 R2 with NBU 7.5 single physical machine with 1 LTO4 drive in HP Autoloader.

Backup is happening without any issues but after retention period the medias are getting full and scratch is running out of tapes. Hence failing with error code 96.

When checked issuing commands like bpexpdate -deassignempty / vmquery it s failing by giving the error that the media is not listed in the database and gives the error code 35 on CLI.

When i check the media contents from the GUI, it gives error code 95.

Any suggestions/solutions for this issue.

[Marianne]

Please show us output of the following for one of these tapes:

nbemmcmd -listmedia -mediaid <media-id>

Not sure what this means?

... but after retention period the medias are getting full...

Full medias mean that media is full of valid, unexpired images.  
Please bear in mind that ALL images must expire before NBU can overwrite a tape. 

Careful not to use the Media GUI to expire the tapes - this will add hardware expiration to tapes. Even when all images have expired, media cannot be used when hardware expiration was added.

Have a look at this excellent blog: Understanding how NetBackup writes to a tape.

[mph999]

Marianne asked for some out put for one of your tapes.

For the same tape that you use in Mariannes output, please also post up the output of :

bpmedialist -m <media id>

[jim_dalton]

As per MVDB above, if you dont unload tapes and sit them on a shelf (as an example) then if you happen that more data gets appended to the media , then they will become full but will eventually expire once the last image expires. This could be a long time...if you allow mixed retentions on the same media then once it has  become full then even if theres only 1 byte of retention 1 year it wll still take a year to expire.

Best to not allow multiple retention per media: that way it becomes predictable and therefore manageable.But you need more media....

Jim 

[NBU2010]

Hello Marianne,

Pls. find the o/p of the command.

One thing would like to inform you that i was not getting this o/p earlier when i was checking only after performing media quick erase from the GUI i m getting this o/p.

C:\Program Files\Veritas\NetBackup\bin\admincmd>nbemmcmd.exe -listmedia -mediaid
 O221L4

NBEMMCMD, Version: 7.5
====================================================================
Media GUID:                     2cdbb341-b7e5-4a7c-8221-f9e515d1d561
Media ID:                       O221L4
Partner:                        -
Media Type:                     HCART
Volume Group:                   000_00000_TLD
Application:                    Netbackup
Media Flags:                    1
Description:                    Added by Media Manager
Barcode:                        NNO221L4
Partner Barcode:                --------
Last Write Host:                sptsp001.in.ril.com
Created:                        08/21/2013 11:46
Time Assigned:                  10/17/2013 09:35
First Mount:                    08/21/2013 12:03
Last Mount:                     10/17/2013 19:01
Volume Expiration:              -
Data Expiration:                10/31/2013 18:00
Last Written:                   10/17/2013 19:00
Last Read:                      -
Robot Type:                     TLD
Robot Control Host:             sptsp001.in.ril.com
Robot Number:                   0
Slot:                           1
Side/Face:                      -
Cleanings Remaining:            -
Number of Mounts:               16
Maximum Mounts Allowed:         0
Media Status:                   MPX
Kilobytes:                      406636416
Images:                         2
Valid Images:                   2
Retention Period:               1
Number of Restores:             0
Optical Header Size Bytes:      1024
Optical Sector Size Bytes:      0
Optical Partition Size Bytes:   0
Last Header Offset:             1588431
Adamm Guid:                     00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000
Rsm Guid:                       00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000
Origin Host:                    NONE
Master Host:                    sptsp001.in.ril.com
Server Group:                   NO_SHARING_GROUP
Upgrade Conflicts Flag:
Pool Number:                    1
Volume Pool:                    NetBackup
Previous Pool Name:             SCRATCH
Vault Flags:                    -
Vault Container:                -
Vault Name:                     -
Vault Slot:                     -
Session ID:                     -
Date Vaulted:                   -
Return Date:                    -
Media on Hold:                  0
====================================================================
Command completed successfully.

C:\Program Files\Veritas\NetBackup\bin\admincmd>bpmedialist.exe -m O221L4
Server Host = sptsp001.in.ril.com

 id     rl  images   allocated        last updated      density  kbytes restores

           vimages   expiration       last read         <------- STATUS ------->

           On Hold
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

O221L4   1      2   10/17/2013 09:35  10/17/2013 19:00   hcart   406636416     0

              MPX   10/31/2013 18:00        N/A
           0

[NBU2010]

Hello Martin,

O/p. is provided.

[Marianne]

We needed to see output BEFORE you did quick erase to see the reason for tape not being used for backups... 

So, you managed to write backups to this tape yesterday and we have no idea why you could not do this previously....

Time Assigned:                  10/17/2013 09:35

Data Expiration:                10/31/2013 18:00
Last Written:                   10/17/2013 19:00

Quick erase has never been needed to make tapes available. NBU will automatically overwrite when all images have expired and image cleanup has completed (media deassigned).

Please show us nbemmcmd output of media id that you feel should be available and causing status 96...

[NBU2010]

Same has been resolved after refering Technical team from symantec.

[Marianne]

Please tell us HOW it was resolved?

This will help other users with similar issues.