Media Expire

[H_Sharma]

Hello Experts,

What happens when a media expires. Few Queries.

1:- We can import the expired media. So my query is when we put expired media in library and inventory the robot.

    Does not netbackup clean the image of this expired media immediately?

2:- Should we write protect the tape when we insert the expired media so that we can import it later? As per my understanding if we put expired media on library in the image cleanup job i.e 12 hours default it will delete the contents and we can never import it again.

Pls help.

[sksujeet]

1> Expired media has nothing to cleanup, this will move to scratch pool.(Please read the manuals and basic understanding how NBU works). You can try google of below topics

Image cleanup in NetBackup
Expired Media in NetBackup

2>

Why you want to import the media? The media data will stay intact till you have the retention set on those tapes. The import media on expired tapes is used when you have urgent restore and found that tape is expired and not yet OVERWRITTEN. This should be last option though and should not be sued as regular practise.
For image cleanup read the articles again and you will come to know why and when we use image cleanup.

[Deeps]

Hargyan,

When you import an expired image, during the phase 1 , it creates the header file for this image.For this image , the imagetype will be marked as 1 (  Phase 1) which tells netbackup not t expire this header file.Once phase 2 is completed , this imagetype is set as 2 (Phase 2 completes) and at this time the retention of images is changed as currenttime + original retention level. So, if you have a tape (images with retention level = 8) which on the original server = 1 year, but import on a different server where the retention level 8 = 1 day, then the new imports will expire after 1 day.The other way to avoid /overwrite this is by creatin NO.EXPIRE touch file.

By default any image with imagetype =1 ( Only phase 1 is complete but not  phase 2 ) , has retention of 7 days.After 7 days Netbackup will expire this image and you have to run phase 1 again for that backupimage.

Regarding media, yes Symantec recommend to mark these media as write protected or move them to a seprate volume pool created for import purpose.Hope this helps.

DeepS

[Marianne · Accepted solution]

No, NetBackup never deletes or 'wipes' the tape physically.
This will require loading a tape in a drive. 
You will agree that an Inventory does not do this, right?
Only disk images are physically deleted when they expire.

When all images expire, only the catalog entries about the backups are removed/deleted from the image catalog on the master server, the media becomes 'deassigned' in media database and the tape is now available for backups again and will be overwritten. 
At this point, the data is still on tape and can be imported again.
The moment the tape is mounted for a new backup, new data is overwriting the data from the beginning of tape.
Immediately after tape mount for new backup, the media id written to the tape header. This 'internal label' is equivalent to a 'quick erase'. At this point all old data on the tape is gone. It cannot be imported.

So, you write-protect expired tapes to prevent them from being overwritten.

To prevent expiration and the lengthy 2-step task of imports, carefully check Retention levels in your schedules.
Ensure that Retention/Expiry dates match business requirements.
So, when your Retention Levels meet business requirements, there should never be a need for imports.