SLP Duplication Job on Tape fails with error No Media is available

[SYM_UFO]

Hi All,

We have NBU 7.5.0.6 on Windows Server 2008 R2 at Primary site we have Master+Media and on secondary site we have Media server only. We are using SLP to backup one of our file servers, the backup job completes successfully on MSDP, but Duplication job on Tape fails with error No Media is available.

Whereas there are 5 tapes available in this Volume pool, and we can perform manual backups on this Volume pool without any issues. It only fails with SLP. We have Multiple retentions per tape selected from master host properties.

Any suggestions?

[Marianne]

Which media server should perform the SLP duplication - master/media or media server?

Check for differences between policy used for successful backup and SLP: 
1. Which STU?
2. Pool name?
3. Retention level?

Please show us output of 'available_media' script (open cmd on master with 'Run as Administrator' and run command from <install-path>\veritas\netbackup\bin\goodies ).

Also show output of the following command for one of the tapes that you feel should be used for the duplication:
nbemmcmd -listmedia -mediaid <media-id> 
(command is in <install-path>\veritas\netbackup\bin\admincmd)

[SYM_UFO]

Only One Full Backup Duplication SLP job is failing.

Remote Media Server should perform SLP Duplication.

1. Successful Differential SLP is using Same STU.

2. Using Same pool as successful Differential SLP.

3. Successful and unsuccessful backups have different retention Periods set. (This is the only difference)

But we have Allow Multiple retentons per media selected in Master and media Server Host properties, so this shouldn't be as issue.

Please find the attached outputs.

Thanks

[SYM_UFO]

I have adjusted the retention policy of the Full backup to match retention policy of differential backup now both jobs have same retention period. I have moved a tape from File Server Backup pool to Scratch Pool, This time Duplication SLP job completes successfully.

It used the tape from Scratch pool not from the pool defined in SLP.

Any suggestions.

[Marianne]

Do you have more than one media server?

Media is not shared between media servers by default (can be enabled).

It is never a good idea to enable multiple retentions on media.
It solves media issues in the short term, but creates headaches in the long run because ALL images must expire before media can be reused.
So, if you have lots of differential backups with (e.g. 1 week retention) and one full backup with 1 year retention on the same full tape, it can only be used again after a year.
Even though differentials have expired, the space cannot be used/rewritten.

See this excellent blog:
Understanding how NetBackup writes to a tape.

[revarooo · Accepted solution]

Were all your other tapes in that pool written to by backups using different retention? As Marianne mentions, if you don't have multiple retentions set then it will need to use a different tape.