Media Retention

[H_Sharma]

Hi Experts,

I have to increase retention of the images from 1 month to 1 year.

Found we have 4 tapes that have all the required images and 18 images on these 4 tapes.

we dont have mutiple retention on tape

Got confusion. I believe i have 2 options

1:- Extend the required images on tape one by one. That means i am extending tapes retention.

or 

2:- Extend the tape rention to one year. No need to change all images one by one. 

Pls correct me if i am wrong on any part here.

Now 

When we select any media from volume pool it says on the properties as per attachment. 

Expiration date
Never
Date

Does it referring to point 2 ? which i mentioned above. In short by extending media retention to one more year  am i setting the tape expiry to next year? that would mean netbackup wont write anything on this tape after it expires next year.

Pls help?

[revarooo]

Change the expiration by media, this should change the expiration of the images associated to that media.

bpexpdate -m <media_id> -d mm/dd/yyyy

Then double check the image expiration on the images to ensure it has taken effect.

[H_Sharma]

Thanks Revarooo,

So in this case you recommend i should go for media extention not all the images extention one by one?

[Marianne · Accepted solution]

I agree - go for option 2:

2:- Extend the tape rention to one year. No need to change all images one by one. 

Use bpexpdate - NOT the expiration in the Media GUI.

The expiration in Media GUI is HARDWARE expiration - the date on which media is considered to be too old to be used anymore or faulty. It does not change anything about image retention.

bpexpdate is for IMAGE retention and expiration. 
If you use bpexpdate with media-id, all images on this media-id will get the new expiration date.

To see the clear difference between image retention and hardware expiration on a tape, use this command:

nbemmcmd -listmedia -mediaid <media-id>

[H_Sharma]

Exactly Marianne.

Thanks that created the confusion, hardware part and thats what i was looking for.

:) :) :) :)

[Gerald_W__Gitau]

Remember to always mark the correct answer, this assist others looking for the same solution in future.

[sdo]

The problem with specifying by media id is that it runs through the entire image catalog list, and at large installations this used to take a long time, and uneccessarily stresses the NetBackup envrionment - when I know the images, I do them by image. Another thing about doing it by media, is that if they are any fragments of any other images on those media which you do not want to extend, well they get extended too, which then also effectively locks up any other media upon which the rest of the fragments of the other images reside upon.