Standalone Tape, how to proceed if the second tape is requried.

[rhodelia]

Hi,

We are using a standalone tape library.

Now, we label the tape manually based on the day of the week (e.g. Sumday = A00001).

There should be no problem now as the tape capacity still can store the data backup required.

However, when we incrased the data to be backedup (e.g. additional hard disks), one tape might not be enough.

How to design the backup policy in such a way, it will accept the second tape?

How does labelling work for the second tape?

[Marianne · Accepted solution]

Best to pre-label tapes.

Say you have 6 physical tapes and you decide to put labels/stickers on them:
A00001
A00002
A00003
A00004
A00005
A00006

You next go to Media Gui and add new volumes: A00001 - 6
Ensure density matches that of the tape drive and select a pool. 

Once added, you insert tape A00001 into the tape drive, wait for the 'Ready' light on the drive, then use bplabel as per the TechNote:
bplabel -m A00001 -d hcart -o -p NetBackup -u 0

Repeat for rest of tapes.

So, when A00001 is full, NBU will prompt you to load next available media in the drive.

TN's:
http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH56903 

http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH31177

[rhodelia]

So, when A00001 is full, NBU will prompt you to load next available media in the drive.

-> No need to label the second tape?

[Marianne]

Did you miss the first part of my post?

Best to pre-label tapes.

The next part of my post tells you how to pre-label the tapes...

[rhodelia]

Our current backup already including the labelling. What I worry is the second tape when the first tape is already full..

[Marianne]

As I've said in my 1st reply - it will display a message in Activity Monitor details as well as a Pending Request in Device Monitor. Because you have pre-added and pre-labelled more media, NBU will know more tapes are available and not fail with status 96.

Please go through the TNs that I've mentioned above?

[mph999]

Adding to Mariannes excellent post.

Best to get a tape changer or library.  NBU is not really designed to run with stand alone drives, yes it will work, but it is a pain.

You have enterprise backup software, that costs many $/ £  ....and you run with a standalone drive, which really does not allow you to get the full use of NBU.  Even a small x10 tape changer would give you much more flexability and these are not particularly expensive.

Martin

[Nicolai]

Just my words. If you have a robot/changer you don't need to worry. Just add free tapes and Netbackup will take care of the rest.