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Tape Expiry Confusion

markdavies1978
Level 5

Hi all,

Just noticed with NBU BAR that a backup image (where the policy has a 1 year retention set) states that the image will expire in 1 month.

However, when I run a 'images on tape' report the expiration is correct and is 1 year from now.

Anyone seen this before?

I'm running NBU 7.1.0.4 on W2K8 R2 STD 64-Bit.

Thanks!

23 REPLIES 23

markdavies1978
Level 5

@ Mark_Solutions

Thanks for your input, your last post has help me understand what the issue was.

sksujeet
Level 6
Partner Accredited Certified

Hi Markdavies,

Just tested it, with environment 6.5 sssssssshhhhhhh(Be quiet).

Created multiple copies exacty same way and for me it ran 3 jobs in the activity monitor.One job will just show the information of other 2 or it is kind of parent job. One job shows the retention of 1 month and other one shows retention of 1 year.In the BAR GUI it will only show 1 restore and the expiry date would be the shortest image expiry though TAPE would be picked up per the primary image.

So the image expiry it will show for the COPY 2 which is shortest as per your environment but the tape for restore it shows is Primary copy. I then expired the COPY 2 image and it now shows the primary copy retention as 1 year.

Conclusion:

The way NBU designed you want to keep the shortest retention onsite to restore data.In your scenario if you send the primary copy to offsite then you have to promote your copy 2 as primary to do the restore for first one month.

As you said in your environment "Copy 2 stays on site & the primary goes off site"

copy 2 - retention 1 month
Primary copy - retention 1 year

Have you tried restore within 1 month? because you have to promote your copy 2 to primary everytime for whatever restore within 1 month if you get any kind of restore OR for even yesterday's backup you would be recalling offsite tape?

Recomendation:

Better to change primary copy to 1 month and dupliation to 1 year. It will also make things easy to understand and won't be much confusion in case you left the organization smiley
 

Assumption: I don't think this is a bug because this is how it should be designed. Still the data can be restored and it keeps the data as per retention though it just shows the shortest one first.

markdavies1978
Level 5

@ sazz

Thanks for your help, makes sense.

sksujeet
Level 6
Partner Accredited Certified

NP:)

also

The idea being if my site had a melt down I could restore my master server knowing that my Primary copies were offsite and more than likey the images I would have needed would not have expired thus saving the need to import any tapes.

You can still do that with your copy 2, send your copy 2 to offsite and keep the primary copy onsitewink. This is what I have seen in 99.9 % of envionment, only yours being a exception.