Reusing tapes from different server in NBU 6.5

[BFS]

What we are trying to do is reuse expired tapes that were last written to by a different Netbackup server that is no longer in production. I inventoried these tapes on the new Netbackup server, and It froze each tape that it tried to use. We never imported the catalog from the old Netbackup server, so the new server has no way of knowing whether these tapes have been used or not until it tries to write to one. Then when I try to use one of these tapes NBU recognizes it as a different barcode and fails. I tried expiring the old tapes, deleting them, nothing seems to work. I'm stumped...

System Info:

NBU Server on Windows box

LT02 Tapes

Overland Neo 4000 Tape Library 

Thanks!

[cmumma]

What do you have set for "allow media overwrite" in the media section of your media server properties?

[J_H_Is_gone]

Sound like you might have "changed" barcodes on the tapes.

or your new library is reporting the barcodes different.

FYI.

the first time you use a tape netbackup takes what it knows the barcode to be ( see your media list) and WRITES it to the begining of the tape. 

this is for safty - incase the barcodes get switched - if the barcode and the writen tape label do not match it will freeze the tape and not use it - for fear of overwriting a tape that has un-expired images on it.

so if you chaged barcode ( and in this case I think you need to do this).

go to media.

find your tape on the left window and right click it.

choose label

make sure your meida server name is in the box

UN-CHECK Verify media label.

click ok.

this will then mount the tape, and write a NEW tape label on the tape based on the barcode you have.

WARNING - doing this means you can not get anything off the tape that was there before.  so make sure the tape is scratch ( all images expired) before doing this.

then make sure the tape is unfrozen and you should be able to write to it.

[Manoj_Siricilla]

By default, Netbackup doesn't overwrite any of the formats on removable media. 

Here is how you enable media overwrite for windows

From the Admin Console

Netbackup Management -> Host Properties -> Media servers

- In the Right pane, right click on each of the media servers and browse properties.

- Clicking on Properties should open a new window.

- Navigate to the option "Media" under "Properties" in the left pane.

- Now, in the right pane, You should see "Allow Media Overwrite"

- Check all of the options : ANSI, TAR, DBR, RS-MTF1, CPIO, AOS/VS, MTF, BE-MTF1

- Click on Apply and it might ask you to restart the services.

- Restart the services and try performing backup(You might even get away without restarting services)

On a Unix Client, you can add the following to the bp.conf on the all Media Servers.

ALLOW_MEDIA_OVERWRITE = DBR
ALLOW_MEDIA_OVERWRITE = TAR
ALLOW_MEDIA_OVERWRITE = CPIO
ALLOW_MEDIA_OVERWRITE = ANSI
ALLOW_MEDIA_OVERWRITE = AOS/VS
ALLOW_MEDIA_OVERWRITE = MTF1
ALLOW_MEDIA_OVERWRITE = RS-MTF1
ALLOW_MEDIA_OVERWRITE = BE-MTF1

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