Tape barcodes labels - increasing to 8 characters

[jangledfunk]

Hello, I have been using the standard 6 character tape label format in NetBackup for a long time. I now need to change this to the extended 8 character setting going forward. Can anyone please tell me how NetBackup will deal with this when I call for an older backup tape that was written prior to the change?

For example, a label might be 123456L6 and has been recorded in NetBackup, presumably as 123456. But if I have a newer tape with 123456L8, will NetBackup get upset?

Thanks in advance.

[Marianne · Accepted solution]

@jangledfunk 

NetBackup can read and store up to 13 digits for the barcode label. but can store only 6 characters for the media id.
The default is to store the last 6 characters, e.g. 3456L6, but if you configured Media ID generation to store the 1st 6, the media ID will be 123456.
So, if this is how you configured it, you cannot have 123456L8.

You can order media labels with your own customized numbering method.
You may even add a character at the beginning of the L8 tapes to easily identify them, e.g. B00001.
This way you can also add Barcode rules to automatically add anything starting with B as media density that corresponds with LTO8 tape drive density.

[mph999]

Yes, if you have a tape : 123456, if you switch to 8 characters barcode - 123456L8 NBU willl treat every tape as new (as 123456 is not equal to 123456L8) and it will try and add it as a new tape.  This will either fail with duplicate mediaid (as 123456 already exists) or if the media rule is the last 6 characters it will add it successfully with mediaid 3456L8 but will fail when it try's to mount it as the media in the tape header (123456) doesn't;t match what NBU thinks it should be (3456L8).

Yes, we know there is only one tape, but NBU will think there is two.

You could actually get around this by using vmchange to change every barcode to 8 characters, and then setting the library to use 8 characters, not 6 (the library controls what barcode NBU displays).

What you cannot change, is the mediaID gen rule to magic up any different mediaID as you will get an error as described above.