Poor Man's Vaulting Question

[BR549]

I have been tasked to see if there is a method to vault tapes from a Windows Veritas NetBackup 6.5.6 Master/Media server when the Vaulting module is not licensed/activated.  It's a long story...

Currently I am using vaulting with a deferred eject operating under a Temporary license.  While we specifically specified our need for Vaulting capabilities in our purchase request, the permanent license key we received did not activate the vaulting module. 

Due to budget constraints it is likely that management will not approve the additional expenditure required to procure the vaulting module for our installation at this time.  The whole purchasing nightmare is another issue altogether...

I know there is the vltopmenu functionality within Veritas, which can be used to manually vault tapes.  Will the vltopmeu funtionality work without the Vaulting option being activated?  My gut feelings tell me that it will not work without the Vaulting option being activated.

I suspect that I can manually copy and eject the tapes through the Administrative console, but that is a fairly labor intensive process and I would like to minimize the additional labor involved as much as possible.

Barring the Vaulting module being activated is there a method via scripting or any other means to vault tapes somewhat automatically and keeping track of what has been vaulted to offsite storage facilities and recalling these tapes on a rotational basis based upon the expiration date of its backup jobs?

Any guideance in this matter would be greatly appreciated.

[J_H_Is_gone]

you can use the tape written report to find out what was written to (at cli)

with that you can eject the tapes (at cli)

also you can query to find the expiration date of the tape and print that. (at cli)

So when you prep your tapes to go off-site you reference that list and key in the return dates.

Or you can get really fancy and take the tape number and the expiration date and create a file that can be uploaded to your off-site software that puts in the tape numbers and return date.

[RonCaplinger]

I don't have anything set up like this and haven't tried it, but from the Netbackup Commands manual:

 Move (eject) multiple volumes from a TL8 or TLD robot to stand-alone

/usr/openv/volmgr/bin/vmchange -multi_eject -w [-h EMM_server |
volume_database_host] -res -ml media_id:media_id: ...:media_id -rt
robot_type -verbose -rn robot_number -rh robot_control_host 

So, if you have all of your ejectable media in the same volume pool, you can use vmquery to generate a list of media in that pool and try to reformat it to feed into the above command (-ml media_id:media_id:...:media_id).

Note that I haven't tried this, but you can see if this will work pretty easily.

Also, this might be better than just taking the list of tapes written, because you may recall tapes from offsite that won't show up in that report and therefore would not get sent back offsite after you are done with your restores.

[errrlog]

I have implemented this on a solaris server. Every thing was automated and including monitoring the tape library when the tapes are removed and performing the inventory. 

Below step should help you build the solution and modify it as per your needs.

TAPES GOING OUT:
1. Create a Scratch pool (if you do not have it already.) I will refer to it as 'Scratch'.

2. Before you begin the tape rotation process CHECK IF ALL JOBS HAVE COMPLETED. (I prefer it that way. But again depends on how it works in your environment. If the backup jobs run 24/7 or so on... )

3. Figure out the tapes to be ejected. This again depends on your requirements. like

• tapes from last 24 hours?
• all tapes in a specific pool? 
• Does the tape has to be Full before you off-site it.

    - I will suggest you use all tapes it specifc pool (eg: Netbackup) . ( on top of that you can run a bpmedialist on the tape media for the full flag)

        vmquery -v 000_00000_TLD -bx | grep NetBackup | cut -d" " -f1
        (... where 000_00000_TLD is your library volume group)

    optional: Test if the tapes are full using bpmedialist. Below link provides you with a good explanation on status bit.
    ( http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=HOWTO43670&cat=MAN_PAGES&key=15143&actp=LIST)

4. Ejecting the tapes. You can eject using the "vmchange", but I preferred manually removing the tapes out and performing inventory. Helpful if your MAP/CAP size is smaller than the number of tapes to be ejected.

5. Perform the media inventory. (here I used a loop to monitor if the Operators have removed the tapes out of the library).
6. Move the ejected media to a new Volume Group. (eg: Databank)
        vmchange -new_v Databank -m <mediaid>


TAPE RECALL:
To recall the expired tapes, you can periodically run a quick report using the below command.

vmquery -v Databank -bx | grep -i Scratch | awk '{print $1}'

Hope this helps.

[watsons]

Just to add on errlog's suggestion, in our site we run script weekly to retrieve a list of need-to-offsite media, manually remove them (from the library) and perform inventory. The offsite list will then be used as a recycle list (for tape to come back onsite) after the retention.

Our script uses a series of criteria (schedule/retention + volume pool + hoursago) to get the media list, making use of commands: bpmedialist/bpimagelist, vmquery, vmpool etc. 

Of course, a weekly report is to be prepared for us to keep track and manage our inventory and usage.