Mannual Tape cartridge management

[mohanl]

Hi,

We are lookinig at a follwing situation :-

SCENARIO - with NBU 7.5

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1. Based upon policy (frequency & retention and original size) about 250 nos. tapes are needed.

2. This results in large Tape library (robotic), to hold and manage all the cartridges in the large tape library, whose cost is prohibitive :-((.

3. Alternatively take much smaller Tape Library with say 50 tape cartiridges, and move tape in-out of the (much) smaller tape library (non-robotic). In other words work things mannually.

Question

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1. Do we need extra (or other) items, e.g. licenses and software components etc. (Symantec-NBU or 3rd party etc.).

2. What are mannual steps that would be needed to done which otherwise would have been automated?

3. Is this is a do-able choice, we should look into at all ?

4. What are issues and Caveat?

Any guidance (paper, documents, procedures etc.) will be greatly appreciated.

Regards

[Yasuhisa_Ishika]

3. Alternatively take much smaller Tape Library with say 50 tape cartiridges, and move tape in-out of the (much) smaller tape library (non-robotic). In other words work things mannually.

I'm wondering at this point as tape library has robotic mech.

What you consider is to migrate from larger robot with 250 slots to smaller robot with 50 slots or so. Right?

[mohanl]

Nope ..... the hardware is not even on order ..... in planning the purchase before actually acquiring the hardware, it is being down-scaled to reduce the financial outlay.

[RLeon · Accepted solution]

We had a similar situation in the past where we'd tell the higher ups that a large tape library is needed for all the direct-to-tape backups to be kept on-site, and then they saying:
"Here, have this 1U tape autoloader with 8 slots. You're welcome."

1. NetBackup Vault should handle this nicely. License(s) is needed to enable the Vault feature.

2. Without Vault, you'd have to manually select and eject tapes. You'd also have to manually keep track of the tapes that have been taken out, and remind yourself to put the expired ones back in for reuse.

3. It is doable, more so with the help of Nbu Vault, but an easier approach would be to invest in Deduplication (MSDP/Nbu Appliance/3rd party, etc.), or, overlook the cost issue and get the larger tape library. Think of it as giving you a lower operational cost in the long run...

4. With Nbu Vault you could vault (I.e., auto-eject and track) original backup tapes, and/or duplicated copies of those tapes. You can schedule the vault job to run whenever, typically once per week or month. Tapes that contain backups will be ejected, which frees up slots for you to insert empty tapes.
These "empty tapes" you put in could also be tapes that were previously vaulted and have been out for long enough for their backups to have expired. Nbu Vault Reports will automaticlly remind you to put them back in for reuse.
This completes the tape rotation cycle.
A caveat would be the frequent tape-in tape-out operational annoyance, and along with it the potential human errors.

P.S.: We were grateful for the high-tech robotic arm and futuristic barcode scanner that came with the 8 slot tape autoloader (We called it Johnny 5). I mean, they could have bestowed us with a standalone tape drive.
Jonny 5 has been dead for a long time now.

[mohanl]

Thanks RLeon,

This helps, I will include the advice for Vault option license to be included. One follow-on question, We don't really want to create duplicate tapes, but lessen the pain of managing "in-this-smaller-library & out-of-this-smaller-library" individual tape objects, as one tape-set.

Is that what you meant is being done, as per you kind response above?

Regard

[RLeon]

Yes, the Nbu Vault admin guide refers to it as vaulting "original copies", as opposed to vaulting duplicated copies.

Nbu Vault is more commonly used for vaulting duplicated copies for sending offsite, but it can also be used to vault original copies to assist in onsite tape rotation; if the tape library is not large enough to house all the filled up tapes at the same time.