Standalone tape drive duplication priority

[Hermann_O]

Hello all,

I've got a problem with a standalone drive, what happens is the following:

1. Starting a manual duplication job via Catalog (select all images from one Media ID > duplicate to another destination)

2. Do the same for another Media ID which is currently not loaded (the idea was that we receive an email via Opscenter as soon as the first duplication job is finished so we receive a tape mount request and then just put in the other tape for the duplication.

The result is the following:

Duplication is started for the first job id (two different jobs are created).

After about 3% the job says:

13.08.2018 18:22:09 - requesting resource server1-hcart-robot-tld-0

13.08.2018 18:22:09 - awaiting resource server1-hcart-robot-tld-0. No drives are available.

 Afterwards the there's a pending request for the tape from my second duplication job.

So I insert the the second tape which runs until about 3% and the same is happening again.

I can reproduce it all the time so the job keeps starting, running for some minutes and then I have to insert the media from the other job.

If I start only one duplication job it is running without any issues until the end so basically the duplication works.

Only if two parallel jobs are started I have to keep changing the tapes all time.

I tried to change the job priority but this didn't change anything.

If I deny the pending request in the Device Monitor then the stucking job with the status "No drives are available." continues.

Does anyone have an idea why this is happening?

Thanks in advance for your help.

[Marianne]

You mention standalone tape drive but job details says you have a tape library - tld-0?
How many tape drives do you have in total? Standalone and in the robot?

[Hermann_O]

Hi Marianne,

it's definitely a standalone drive, NetBackup automatically named it like this.

There's one standalone drive and one library with a single drive I have.

The standalone drive is the source and the library the destination, the standalone drive is the one doing problems here.

[Marianne]

2 tape drives will only allow you to do 1 duplication at a time.

So, you need to wait for 1st duplication to complete before starting the next one. 

[Hermann_O]

You're right it's only possible that one job runs in parallel (since one drive is the source and the other the destination).

But can't I just start a second job so it will be queued and started as soon as the other one is finished or do I understand something wrong?

[Marianne]

It seems that Duplication jobs do not queue like Backup jobs. 

[Anshu_Pathak · Accepted solution]

Run your duplications from command line using “bpduplicate” command. This command allows you to specify a file name (BID file) which has list of all backup ids that you want to duplicate. This duplication job will be sequential in nature hence second duplication will automatically start as soon as first completes and so on and so forth.