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Media Sharing Questions

cdserrano
Level 2
Partner Accredited Certified

 

Hi
 
Guys
 
What Cons that can be given when I enable Media Sharing?
 
Where I can get some statistics to optimize the use of the tapes after enable Media Sharing?
 
And how I set the Maximum number of partially full media?  that´s dependes of the number of drive that i have?
 
Best Regards,
 
Carlos Serrano
1 REPLY 1

Marianne
Moderator
Moderator
Partner    VIP    Accredited Certified

Two ways to enable Media Sharing:

1. Enable unrestricted media sharing for all media servers
2. Create Sharing Groups

The 1st one is done in Host Properties > Media.
The 2nd one in Media and Device Management > Devices > Server Groups.

I would use the 2nd option in bigger environments where there are multiple robots and/or a mix of Unix and Windows media servers. 1st option for small, same/similar OS media servers.

I can only think of pro's as far as media sharing is concerned. Extract from Admin Guide I:

Media sharing provides the following benefits:
■ Increases media utilization by reducing the number of partially full media.
■ Reduces media-related expenses because fewer media are required and fewer media are vaulted (NetBackup Vault option).
■ Reduces administrative overhead because you inject fewer scratch media into the robotic library.
■ Increases media life because media are mounted fewer times. Media are not repositioned and unmounted between write operations from different media servers.

 

Specifying 'Maximum number of partially full media' is a Volume Pool attribute.

This can have negative impact, as NBU will queue backup jobs when number of partially full media is reached until media becomes available. It will also limit the number of drives that can be used - If you have enough jobs for 3 tape drives and the same pool, but MPF value for this pool is set to 2, only 2 tape drives will be assigned. 3rd job will queue.

You can enable Media Sharing without Maximum number of partially full media. That is what most of our customers have done.

 

All of the above info was taken from NBU 6.5 Admin Guide I: http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH52801

 

 

****** Edit *****

About your statistics question:

You can use 'media/tapes written report'. Run this report every day before enabling Media Sharing.

Compare reports after enabling sharing.