Need to freeze an unassigned media

[Bshet]

Hi Team,

I want to freeze an unassigned media in NBU 7.1.0.4

I tried to fake assign media using vmquery command but it fails.

Command : vmquery .exe -assignbyid <media_id> HCART2 4 0 13/01/2014

It fails with below error

Assign media by ID is not allowed for NetBackup media.

invalid media ID (8)

Please help.

Regrads,

Bharat Shet

[Mark_Solutions]

You cannot freeze it if it is unassigned (or assign it manually) - best to move it to a holding pool so it cannot be used or change its density so that it wont be used (change from hcat to hcart2 for example)

Curious as to why you want to actually do this?

[StefanosM]

your best option is to move the tapes to a new volume pool (or at the none pool)

The command vmquery -assignbyid is not working with 7.x (and 6.x)

if you need to assign it use the command,
vmquery  -assigntohost <media_id> <assigntime> <hostname>
      Assign a volume by media id and host.  Replaces -assignbyid for
      NetBackup volumes.

But before you use it in your production test it thoroughly, as it is unsupported.

[Marianne]

I agree with Stefanos and Mark - vmquery -assignbyid will not work.

Why do you need to freeze an unassigned tape?

Many ways to prevent NBU from using this tape (depending on what is wrong with it):

• Move to non-backup pool (create new pool for this purpose)
• Remove from robot and delete tape.
• Add hardware expiration date.

[Bshet]

Hi All,

we think that media is corrupt as whenever the backup takes that media it fails wth error 84 so wanted to freeze and keep.

[StefanosM]

try to run bplabel on that media from command line. It will help you to see if you can write the tape header or it will give you the reason why you can not write on the tape.

[Mark_Solutions · Accepted solution]

After three failures NetBackup would normally freeze it anyway - best to just remove it from the library and store it somewhere where it will not get used

If not frozen and you cannot remove it yet then just put it in an unused volume pool

[Nicolai]

If I recall corectly you can freeze a unassigned media in NBU 7.x.. Previous version of Netbackup could not do that

[Marianne]

... we think that media is corrupt as whenever the backup takes that media it fails wth error 84...

So, when error 84 is seen, the media is Assigned. Surely you can freeze it at this point?

The methods listed in previous posts will also prevent NBU from using unassigned tapes.