Retention policy is not relating to the Expiration date

[Phil_McDougal]

Hello all,

I am hoping someone can shed some light on some weird things I'm seeing. 

I had some Full backups (with a retention of 6-weeks) that I wanted to "BPEXPDATE -m XXXXXX -d INFINITY".

Well, I went into the Images on Media report and I see that the Retention Period says 6-Weeks but the Expiration Date says 1/18/2038 (or infinity).  I don't remember running the BPEXPDATE command but the mind is the first thing to go ...

Either way, when trying to verify the proper retention period or expiration, can I go by the Expiration Date and rest easy that these images will be good until 2038?  And is the Retention Period just holding onto the information or metadata of the Retention Period of the initial backup policy even though the expiration date is Infinity?

Thank you for any insight!
Phil.

[Omar_Villa]

remember that there are 3 diferent DB in NBU, mediaDB, imageDB and volDB, probably in your case that specific media is not sync between mediaDB and imageDB, because your expiration date is one for the media and the image retention is other for the image, so there is defenitly a discrepancie here, if you are using vault I check the next link http://support.veritas.com/docs/282996  maybe that can help.

also check this tech note http://support.veritas.com/docs/237159  there u can see that sometime if we can have one expiration date for the media but with a different retention level for the images.

Hope this helps.

Regards

[Omar_Villa]

also this can help http://support.veritas.com/docs/277061 

[Phil_McDougal]

Thanks for the info Omar.  Unfortunately, those technotes don't apply.

I guess what really matters is the Expiration date that comes up from the Images on Media report.  I'm thinking that because the job was run with the 6-week retention of my daily backup, once I bpexpdate'd the tapes, the expiration date changes but the retention period will still say the backup policy retention was when the backup job (in this case the 6-weeks). 

I still can't remember bpepxdate'ing these tapes but if they say the expire on 1/18/2038, then I must have (no one else touches the backup system).

Does that sound logical or am I still shaking off the weekend?

Thank you in advance!
Phil.

[Rakesh_Khandelw]

Any media/image with expiration set to infinity will expire on January 19, 2038.... .

http://support.veritas.com/docs/235014

When is the expiration date of a backup written with a retention level set to infinity?

Details:

Manual:  N/A

Page:  N/A

Modification Type:  Correction and version update

Modification:  VERITAS NetBackup (tm) 3.2/3.4 to NetBackup 4.5/5.X

For a retention level set to infinity, the backup image will expire 2147483647, UNIX CTIME or January 19, 2038.  Here is one example.


/usr/openv/netbackup/bin/admincmd/bpimagelist -L


ID:               /disk/googolplex_1107538635_C1_F1
Host:             googolplex
Block Size:       262144
Offset:           0
Media Date:       Wed Dec 31 1969 18:00:00 (0)
Dev Written On:   -1
Flags:            0x0
Media Descriptor:        ?
Expiration Time:            INFINITY       (2147483647)
MPX:              0
retention_lvl:    infinity (9)
checkpoint:       0
resume num:       0

[Phil_McDougal]

Hi Rakesh.

Thank you for the reply.

I understand the dates/times associated with Infinite retention periods but I'm more curious to see if my previous post was accurate.

If someone BPEXPDATEs a tape to -d infinity, will the Retention Level that the policy ran (in my case 6 Week retention) keep that information even though the Expiration date says 1/18/2038? 

I need to send my tapes offsite but when I view the Images on Media report, I see Retention policy 6 Weeks even though the expiration date is 1/18/2038 and I want to make sure that the tapes won't expire in 6 weeks.

Thanks!
Phil.

[Clayton_Walter]

Phil,

This is something that I've been working on as well.  I regularly run into scenarios where I need to extend the expiration dates due to NBs wonderful ability to assign jobs to the wrong volume pools and retention policies.

I have yet to find a solution to re-assigning tapes (or images) to the correct volume pools or retention periods after I run a bpexpdate to extend the data expiration. For now I can live with it as long as the data is on the tapes and the image information is in the NB catalog. 

When you use bpexpdate to modify the data expiration, the data on your tapes will not expire and NB catalog will retain the records until the data expiration date is reached regardless of the retention period that was originally assigned to the tape/image.

I hope this helps.

Clayton

[Phil_McDougal]

Thanks Clayton, that's exactly what I thought but I'm glad you clarified it for me.

Phil.

[Karthikeyan_Sun]

Why this is happening, I want to maintain my Backup Copy after that period also :(

[J_H_Is_gone]

This has to do with the way unix saves dates - you know that big long number you see on your images is a 32 bit date - (32 bit systems).  this number runs out of space and will wrap around in 2038  ( Think of it as the year 2000 issue for unix)

the solution is 64 bit. 

See wikpedia
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_2038_problem

or just do a search for January 19, 2038 and see the many many web pages that talk abou it.

[Will_Restore]

but I don't plan to do Netbackup for another 28 years. :)

[Andy_Welburn]

Maybe this post'll still be active then? ;)

[J_H_Is_gone]

you know they said the same thing about cobal and two digits years in the programing in the 80's.
Said the servers would not be around in the year 2000.
And some of them were not.
But the code just got moved to the new servers and we still had to go back and fix it all.

So now we all say the 32's will be gone by 2038, but that is less then 29 years from now... we can only hope.  Or at least I will not be working by then and I won't have to do that again!  Once in a life time was enough.

[Andy_Welburn]

Y2K......such fond memories.............!