Starting Fresh, what to do?

[ekim]

I am running NetBackup 6.5 and have been doing extensive testing with the product. Now that the system will be going into a production status, I want to wipe out all the old test backups and start fresh with the real backups. What is the best way to do this? I have some tapes that say they are unable to delete assigned volume and/or media. If I do a quick erase on those tapes will that also clear out whatever associated backup data related to those tapes that is in the catalog?

[ekim]

Forgot to mention, i am trying to delete the tapes from the default NetBackup volume pool and move them over to a different volume pool.

[ekim]

Got it, since the tape has active images I don't want, this command can be used to get rid of them:

bpexpdate -m MediaID -d 0

From: http://seer.entsupport.symantec.com/docs/281319.htm

Also, from the man page:

The bpexpdate command allows the expiration date and time of backups to be changed in the NetBackup image catalog.

[CY · Accepted solution]

Use NBU Catalog tool to expire test backup images.

From NBU Admin -> NetBackup Management -> Catalog:

Give the criteria of the test backups that you no longer need to keep, such as policy name, client name, and date/time range.

After click "search now", select the backup images that you no longer need, and right click to select "Expire..."

After the backup images expired, the NBU will deassign the "empty" media tonight.  Or if you want to force the process, run "bpexpdate -deassignempty" from your NBU Master server.

[ekim]

Thanks CY. So, if I use the command I found above, does it automatically expire the backup images on those tapes? Or would I still have to expire each backup image manually?

[Deepak_W]

Hi Ekim,
the tape can be expired with the bpexpdate command

Now that the media is expired, it can be used for backups again and will be overwritten.

Also NetBackup doesn't allow different retention periods on the same tape, so that means when you manually expire the media with bpexpdate, media becomes available and is overwritten when used for backup 

[Sriram]

Try this out:

When you are trying to wipe out all the backups used for test and free the tapes for production use:

1.  Get the list of all the policies you ran for testing.

2.  Issue the following command against each policy you found on step 1

bpimagelist -policy <policy name> -U -d 01/01/2008 -media -idonly

Now you will get all the tapes associated with the test backups you ran.

3.  Get the list of tapes from step 2.

4.  Issue "bpexpdate -m <tape numner> -d 0" against each tape you found in step 3.  This will expire the tape and the tape automatically goes to the volume where it was first assigned.  If the tape was used by backup from scratch it will go to scratch otherwise it will go the corresponding volume pool.

5.  If step 4 does not move all the tapes to scratch, identifiy the tapes which din't went to scratch eject them from the tape library.

6.  Re-load the tape to the tape library and when you do the inventory clienck update volume configurationgo to advanced options, override the barcode rules and select Media Type and to which Volume Pool  you want the media to go.

After successful completion of step 6 you will find all your tapes are ready to be used for production backups which are sitting in scratch.

Cheers :)

[J_H_Is_gone]

All of the above should work for you.

But as it seems you are new to NetBackup I would just like to clarify one point they all make.

They all say this will expire the 'tape'

What they are really saying is that it will expire all the images ON the tape.

Please remember the is a difference between the expiration date of an image on a tape, and the expiration date of physical media ( must people DON'T set this).  This seems to be confusion for most people new to NetBackup - I know it took me a while to grasp the difference.

[ekim]

Ahhh, many thanks to all and for J.Hinchcliffe's clarification. That did have me confused. Not sure if I can do it but I'll try to mark this as multi-solution...