Status Code: 96 Unable to allocate new media for backup.

[abig]

Hi
I apologize for this question because I am beginner to NBU. 
I am using NBU 6.0MP4  on win2003,  have one policy with specific volume pool contains one media cartridge,  I have defined  two schedules in this policy, one for full backup and another for differential backup for one specific client.
 available_media.cmd output shows media is available.
when start manual backup for this policy and select  full schedule for client, backup runs successfully, but when start  manual backup and select differential schedule, get  Status Code: 96  Unable to allocate new media for backup. but every time start full backup, everything is OK. yes have many available media cartridges in different  volume pools, but want to backup everything from this client to this specific media cartridge using this policy and dont want to use another media, for example media in scratch pool.

Can i do such thing? and What is my problem? TIA

 

[Amit_Karia]

1) Is this client being backed up by a specific media server .. if so check media owner ship bpmedialist -m <mediaid> 
if media server is differerent then desired media server. kindly change media ownership with following command

bpmedia -movedb -m <mediaid> -newserver <desiredmedia server> -oldserver < current mediaserver>

2) check if that particular media is frozen or full . (you will get status from same command) ..if media is frozen you can unfreeze from bpemdia -unfreeze -m <mediaid> -h <mediaserer>
if it is fulll then you may have to insert new media or expire the media if images on it are not requr.

3) Also check that particular media is of correct media type

[Seth_Bokelman · Accepted solution]

Also make sure they're both using the same retention setting, or they won't use the same piece of media...

[J_H_Is_gone]

You state that your full works but the incremental does not.

Frist - are both tapes assigned?

As Amit said - if the tape is frozen it will not get use.  If one tape is full then it cannot backup to that tape and will only use the other tape.

What may be your issue is the Retention Periods - by default Netbackup will not MIX retention periods on the same tape.

So say that your full backup has a 6 week retention and your incremental has a 2 week retention - then it will not write both of those to the same tape.  So if the Full backup filled up one tape and went to the other tape and you have no tapes in a scratch pool for it to pull from then there are no avail tapes for the incremental.

You can check this out by going to
Reports/Tape Reports/Images on Tape
put in your tape number and run the report (leave the client blank)
now look at the Retention column and see what the retention period is.
Now do that to the other tape.  If they both have the Full's retention period then you have no tape avail for the incrementals.

Now you can change this and allow mix - but that will end up making you use even more tapes.

If you do not remove the tape from the library after each backup and just keep appending to the same tapes at some point a tape will become full and you will need another one.  So from my point of view you will need 4 tapes minimum in that one pool to get it to work with two different retention periods.

[abig]

Thanks all for your replies, the retention period was my fault, I set different retention period for media and now backup runs well. appreciate all of  you for your true answers.