Tracking off-site vendor media ids in NBU

[BrettRabe]

Greetings.

NBU 7.0.1, with a NetApp VTL, duplicating to LTO4 tapes for offsiting.

Our offsite vendor uses their own media id and sticker for their tracking/storing purposes.

Is there a way to track this in NBU? Some EMM field somewhere, perhaps? :)

What I basically need is a secondary media id so that I can store both our media id (our barcoded id, which is something like STKXXX) and their media id (TAPE-XXXX-XXX-XXXXXXX, where only the last 7 digits change).

So far we've been tracking it in an external database so that we can correlate our NBU media id to our offsite vendor's media id, but it'd be nice to ditch the external component.

I looked at the Slot information in vaulting, but that really tracks what amounts to a physical location at the vendor, and it re-utilizes what it assumes are empty slots once it has returned media. So that won't work (unless that behavior can be modified?).

Any creative ideas?

Very best case I get a solution where, when our vaulting policy runs, I can generate a list that shows our media id and barcode alone with our offsite vendor's media id.

-Brett

[Will_Restore]

The slot number value can be modified thus:

vmchange  -vltslot <slot>  -m <mediaID>

[BrettRabe]

Sure, Bill, but unless I'm not following you, that still obligates me to track it separately somewhere so that I know what slot number to change it to! So that doesn't really solve the problem.

NBU removes the slot assignment once the media is returned back from the offsite vault, and then re-uses that slot assignment for different media later (under the assumption that the physical space associated with the slot number is now empty and available).

I think a simpler way to ask my question might be: Is there a way to track two unique media IDs for one physical media, within NBU.

[Anonymous · Accepted solution]

There is the description field for the media you can use. Its a free text field. Limited chars though.

During the eject change the value of the field and vice-versa on import.

This could be prone to be overwritten however by NBU itself.

[BrettRabe]

Oh ho. Now we're talking. I didn't know about the description field. We have a set number of tapes, of course. It's trivial for me to run a script that assigns all of them the correct vendor media id (which never changes, just like the nbu media id for a given piece of media). So long as that information isn't overwritten (like you suggest it might be), that'd be perfect.

Thanks.

[Will_Restore]

Glad you found a solution.  Just so I'm clear, how is the one field (media description) better than the other (slot number)? 

[Anonymous]

This is kind of vaulting without VAULT, another area you could use is the Volume Group. When volumes are removed from a libraries inventory they are placed in a Volume group ----

You could give a unique name for group of media as in "offsiteweek34" (again this is limited field chars 14 or 16 i think) and put them in that instead (via scripting)

This would of course be for a group of media, not individual volumes.

When they come back on site they are automatically removed out of that group and the group is automatically deleted when there are no remaining volumes.

[BrettRabe]

It's better because I can run a simple script once to assign the offsite vendor's media id to the Media Description field and it will  remain permanently associated with that specific piece of media - which is exactly what I want. (Unless NBU overwrites that field at some point; I haven't been able to test that yet or figure it out from documentation.)

That way, when I later take my vault output for the week, I can use the data already in the EMM database to generate the correct form for my vendor (which has to include the vendor's media id). Otherwise I have to take the vaulting output and match up the NBU media ids with vendor ids stored in some other database, and then generate the vaulting form for our vendor. I'd like to eliminate that external database. Make sense?

Essentially, I have tapes in NBU with, for example, media ids of STK001. My offsite vendor has their own idea of that tape's media id: TAPE-some-customer-id-XXXXX. So I need to be able to take my vaulting data every week and create the right form that includes the vendor's media id.

The slot number is only associated with the media so long as that media is actually in that physical slot offsite. As soon as the media expires and you return it to your onsite inventory, the slot number is disassociated with the media and that slot is reused in a subsequent vaulting operation with a different piece of media (on the assumption that the physical location associated with that slot number is now free and a new media tape can be stored in it). That's the correct behavior; it just doesn't match my situation.

[BrettRabe]

In response to Stuart's first suggestion about changing it at eject and inject....

The whole point is that I don't want to be changing it. I want to (from a functional standpoint) assign two media ids to a physical tape that are permanently retained. One that's used by our offsite vendor, one that's used by us (NBU).

If the description field *isn't* overwritten, it's perfect. I'll just modify all of the tapes with the correct media id from the vendor and never have to worry about it again (beyond writing a script to pull that info out during vaulting to create the right form for the vendor).

Thanks again, guys.