Tapes getting assigned to wrong volume pool

[prats]

Hi all,

We are using Netbackup 6.5.5 and the environment is a mix of Windows and Solaris servers.We have different volume pools designated for Windows and Solaris servers.

The problem is sometimes Windows tapes get pulled up for Solaris backup and vice- versa. It does not happen too often but we would like to avoid such incidents.The Windows tapes are labelled with "Wxxxxx" and the Solaris ones with "Sxxxxx" and that,s how we notice whenever tapes get landed in wrong volume pools.

All our policies do not have the "override volume pool" option checked. So not sure what is causing this issue. Ideas anyone?

Currently what we do is when the faulting tape is back from offsite, we move it to the correct volume pool from the scratch pool.

Regards

[Marianne]

Seems you don't need Scratch - move all tapes in Scratch pool to their desired pools and delete Scratch Pool.

The only logical conclusion here is that some tapes were not moved out of Scratch in time, which made them available to any pool. That is the purpose of having a Scrarch pool.

[Nicolai]

Do you have RETURN_UNASSIGNED_MEDIA_TO_SCRATCH_POOL="yes" set in the EMM database ?

Verify with nbemmcmd -listsettings -machinename MASTER_SERVER | grep RETURN

Update:

bump - too late again

[Andy_Welburn]

with regards to the tapes they utilise?

Seems like you're creating unnecessary work for yourself in administering your environment, although you may very well have a very good reason for doing so.

[J_H_Is_gone]

I did the same thing, that was what I got as an understanding of barcodes and pools when I came back from my first Netbackup Class.  Then I found what a PAIN that is.

when I had to build a new master and a new robot..... new tapes new barcodes and one pool for 90% of backups.  (other pools are because we want to easy id the 7 year tapes when they come out of the library)

Life so so much easier now, and much easier making user I have enough tapes for the weekend.

[Reagan · Accepted solution]

When free tapes in one tape pool are no longer available, NetBackup will put a tape from the scratch pool into the that tape pool for backup.  NetBackup doesn't care what label it has as long as its in the scratch pool.

Even if tapes of different labels are placed into the same volume pool, the Windows and UNIX backup tapes are still physically separated from each other. 

I would recommend keeping the scratch pool and rely on looking at my volume pools to let me know the volume pool that each tape belongs too. 

If really needed, the best way to specify barcodes to a specific volume pool would be to get rid of the scratch pool and manually administer the tape assignments every day.