Monthly Tape Rotation

[Chris_Czosnek]

Hello everyone.  I'm extremely new to Netbackup so please be gentle!

We currently have a nightly backup rotation consisting of ten tapes (NET01 - NET10).
Our backups run and the tapes are swapped out each night with the next in the rotation.
When each tape comes back around in the rotation it is quick erased to be used again (unless it's a month end tape).

At month end we pull two of the tapes for off-site and on-site storage and create two new tapes to put back into the rotation. 

I have read a lot about Netbackup not being the best for supporting only one tape drive but that's all we are using. 

We previously used Backup Exec where I would just pull the two month-end tapes.... label two more new tapes..  and they would be all set to go.  After these new tapes were labeled I was still able to search through my previous backup jobs for files I needed to restore and whatnot.

My questions are:
     1.)  If I pull a tape at month-end and de-assign the media (Ex. NET08 using bpexpdate -d 0 -m NET08 -host xxxxxx) to make a new tape with that label....  will I still be able to search for files on the previous NET08 tape?  ....or will record of this backup be wiped out so I have to run through the import wizard?

     2.)  Is there a better way to be having a rotation like this which will give me the ability to search through all my previous backups for a file to restore?  It would be a pain to need to know the approximate month to import that tape.


I'm sure I'm going about this completely the wrong way.  Any help with my particular situation would be greatly appreciated.  

[J_H_Is_gone]

a Red Flag when up when I read that you deassign a tape and put one in with the same barcode......

You will get a lot of suggestions...

but you should use the software you have.

1) set up the policy/schedule with a retention... say your week nights are 2 weeks.

[J_H_Is_gone]

a Red Flag when up when I read that you deassign a tape and put one in with the same barcode......

You will get a lot of suggestions...

but you should use the software you have.

1) set up the policy/schedule with a retention... say your week nights are 2 weeks.

[J_H_Is_gone]

a Red Flag when up when I read that you deassign a tape and put one in with the same barcode......

You will get a lot of suggestions...

but you should use the software you have the way it was ment to be use.

1) set up the policy/schedule with a retention... say your week nights schedule is 2 weeks. and say your weekly schedule is 2 months

2) EACH and EVERY tape should have its OWN number(label) you should never have two tapes with the same label.

3)by deassigning the volume, you CANNOT look up what is ON that tape. unless you import it back, but here you might have issues as you will have more then one tape with them same label.

if you set up retentions, and each tape as its own label, then you can search all of the backups that are NOT expired.

the media logs report can tell you each day which tapes have expired.

when the image on a tape expires you can put it back in the rotation to be used again.

please read the manuals (even the help pages from the gui can help).

[Chris_Czosnek]

Ok....

So if I have all of my jobs with a retention period of two weeks.  And at month end I set up two new NetBackup Media's with a different media id (0907MM for example) to be used by these jobs....  how will I be able to search what is on these month-end tapes a year from now and tell what's on them (without re-importing them).  If I'm reading things right then after a retention period ends the record of what is on that specific media is erased. 

Would I have to change the retention at month-end time to be infinity?

[Darren_Dunham]

Netbackup cannot track multiple tapes with the same media ID.  You must give them different names if you want Netbackup to track them.

The barcode does not have to match the tape name, and you can even have multiple tapes with the same barcode (but it's not a good idea, because the barcode won't be unique, so you can't use it to locate the correct volume).

If you 'bpexpdate' a volume, netbackup forgets about all the data that is on the tape.  You could 'bpimport' it in the future (if you knew to do so), but that could conflict if the same name were reused in the meantime.

You will absolutely want to have a unique name for every physical tape you keep.  This may mean that the tapes in the library at any one time are not named "1-10".  Such a scheme is okay if you have very few tapes and track them by hand, but it's completely inadequate for a larger installation.

Can I ask why you want that naming scheme?  Can you just keep making bigger numbers for new tapes?

--
Darren

[Randy_Samora]

Chris,

If you have a 2 week retention period and you ran a backup today, 15 days from today you would not be able to see the data on the tape; much less a year from now.  When the retention period ends, all records of what was on the media are discarded.  The data is still intact on the tape itself as long as the tape has not been reused.  But you would have to import the tape to manipulate the data.  The only way around that, as you said, is an Infinity retention or a lot of paperwork, good writing skills, and nothing better to do with your life than keep track of each tape on paper.

Randy