Netbackup 6.5.4 - Standalone Tape Drive

[new_nb_user]

Netbackup 6.5.4 - Standalone Tape Drive

Hi,

As you may gather by my user name I am new to Netbackup. We have been handed over a system with a single tape drive and tapes have handwritten labels but appear in Netbackup given labels to match the week/day - ie CHD026.  (week 2 , day 6).  Tape CHD026 appears to have been faulty and has not been written to so we decided to delete this from Netbackup and use a new tape but we wanted to label this up the same (ie CHD026). 

Not sure exactly what we did do but we got the tape loaded onto the tape drive and created the barcode rule but when we ran the bplabel command this seemed to hang.  When it came round to week 2 day 6 then the system has loaded and written to the tape but has given it the default label A00000.

Question - Can we amend this to read CHD026 so that we dont have media ids outside of the agreed range ?   Also if we have this issue again and want to replace a tape with the same

[Srikanth_Gubbal]

did you label the new tape with the barcode label CHD026 phyically?

once you do it expire the content the media from catalog by search for this media or use bpexpdate -d <media id> 0 and then insert the new tape, you will see it as new media in the database..

you can repeat the same, whenever you want to replace the tape.

[new_nb_user]

Hi Srikanth,

Thanks for your reply.

The new tape was not physically labelled with barcode label CHD026 - it appears hand written labels only are on the tapes.  There was no data on the corrupted tape as it seems to have had a problem right from the start.

As I am new to this and the system was set up by someone else and handed on I am not sure how the tape drive knows which tape is loaded (unless it writes a header on the tape when it loads it).

The new tape now has been written to but Netbackup now sees this as A00000 - is there any way I can rename this tape without overwriting the data ?  or do i need to wait until it has expired then delete the media as in your instructions above.

I suspect it all makes sense once you have done this a few times - perhaps you can let me know the sequence of actions for this.

Best Regards

[J_H_Is_gone]

Yes, the first time the tape is written to, the 'label' is written to the beginning of the tape.

If using barcodes and a library, the tape drive would write the label based on the barcode that the library and netbackup are using.

But when using standalone tape drives you have no library to read the barcode, and netbackup has no idea what tape it is.  So Netbackup will use a built in 'default'  starting with A00000.  If you put in another unlabeled tape it will be A000001.

To get around this when you put a tape in the stand alone library you will have to add and label it with netbackup.

once the tape as been written to you cannot change the label until all the images are expired, as netbackup keeps track of what images are on which tapes. 

[Will_Restore]

is a good tool to add new media.  Just follow the prompts. 

As noted above, you'll have to wait for images to expire before updating the new tape (A00000) unless you don't mind losing the backups just written to it, in which case you can bpexpdate it. 

[new_nb_user]

Hi All,

Thanks alot for your explanations and suggestions.   I will wait until the tape gets nearer its expiry date and then I will "bpexpdate" it and hopefully I will be able to relabel it.

I am sure I used the barcode rules and put in the required tape number - but when I tried to run the label command (all thru the window gui) it seemed to hang - and after 15mins I stopped the process.  Anyway I will have another go in the New Year.

I have another issue as I have a Unix backgound - so not only have I been handed over Netbackup - which I am new to - but its been put on a windows platform - which again I dont have any knowledge of.

So I think I may be on this forum alot over the next few months - so I do appreciate the fact that you have all responded to help out a fellow user.

[new_nb_user]

Hi All,

Thanks alot for your explanations and suggestions.   I will wait until the tape gets nearer its expiry date and then I will "bpexpdate" it and hopefully I will be able to relabel it.

I am sure I used the barcode rules and put in the required tape number - but when I tried to run the label command (all thru the window gui) it seemed to hang - and after 15mins I stopped the process.  Anyway I will have another go in the New Year.

I have another issue as I have a Unix backgound - so not only have I been handed over Netbackup - which I am new to - but its been put on a windows platform - which again I dont have any knowledge of.

So I think I may be on this forum alot over the next few months - so I do appreciate the fact that you have all responded to help out a fellow user.

[J_H_Is_gone]

I started with Netbackup on a windows master, while my job title is AIX system admin.

I have had to learn a LOT about window just to do backups and restores.  But have learned what I can and cannot do - and have a windows co-worker who I can ask for help.

as to tapes and standalone drives I think this doc may help you.

How to perform Media Management with standalone Drives in NetBackup 5.x and 6.x.
seer.entsupport.symantec.com/docs/296268.htm

[Andy_Welburn]

@ new_nb_user: you'll have to think about changing your name once you've been here a while & climb to the heights of "Trusted Advisor" :D

[new_nb_user]

Thanks - I think I will find that document very useful for the future.  I will try it out once the "rogue named" tape comes round for re-use and see if I can get it labelled with the tape label I want to see in Netbackup.

Its all good fun and luckily there are a couple of guys in the office who do windows support so I can ask them for help when things get tricky.  In the past I have always been told you dont need to be technical to do backups/restores - but thats not true in practice and I learnt quite alot of Unix just by doing backup support - so am hoping to pick up some basic windows knowledge along the way.

Thanks for the support

[Marianne · Accepted solution]

I have also experienced bplabel to 'hang' when insufficient options are used. For this reason, I prefer to do bplabel with standalone drive from cmd:
bplabel -m <media-id> -d <density> -p <pool-name> -u <drive-index-number>

[new_nb_user]

Thanks for the tip Marianne.

Will definitely try that out when I come to re-label this tape.

[new_nb_user]

I have now managed to re-label the tape via the command line (trying through the GUI just kept hanging).
Thanks you all for your assistance