Offsite media testing plan

[Mindaugas_Lauci]

Hi,

I've to write some kind of offsite tape testing plan. We have more than 100 tapes offsite and we would like to do some test restores. I need to document whole procedure..

If you hve wrote something like this, could you please share?

Thanks!

[CY]

"What command I should use to copy that image from tape to disk?"

If you are refering to duplicate the backup image from tape to disk (storage unit), you can use the Catalog utility in the Java Admin GUI, or use bpduplicate command.  Check the NetBackup Admin Guide for the former, and NetBackup Command guide for the latter.

[Mindaugas_Lauci]

Thanks for response! The thing is that I don't want to make additional copy in catalog, it may confuse other things.. I simply want to test media if it is readable.. Is there something like simple copy available in NetBackup?

[CY]

If that's all you want, simply use the BAR tool (Backup, Archive, and Restore) in the Java GUI to select a few files or directories to restore a test box (you don't have to restore to original server), and see if they can be restored successfully.

We do this kind of restore test/verification periodically as a company standard procedure.

[Mindaugas_Lauci]

Yes, this is another way doing this. And I'm starting to believe that this is the only convenient way test offset media.

In my situation I already picked tapes, recalled them from offsite storage, loaded them to library, so I have images, but I don't knot exactly then they were created. I can get client name using bpimmedia (thanks Bob), but I can't get exact date when they were created, because this command shows expiration day and if my retention policy is 9 years it's hard to count date back...

This would be not difficult if i would have to test one or two tapes a month, I need to test 10-20 LTO3 tapes with hundreds of images a month... :D

[sdo]

If you do a restore, how can can this prove that the complete tape is readable - all the way to the very last byte?  Most sites don't test all media, they randomly select a few and then read the complete tape.  I take it that you do do some restores every now and then, so this already proves that restores work?  Do you want to prove the media are still good and completely readable?  If so, why just just use the "media contents report" from the GUI, or use "bpverify" from the command line?

[Mindaugas_Lauci]

I did that, but I wasn't sure that NetBackup read whole tape. I ran bpverify and it took only 15 minutes to read LTO3 tape with 600GB of data... :) You wrote that it will take at least few hours...

Thanks