Wants to Media Expire & Shift Another Pool

[Irfan_Ahmad]

Friends, We are running Veritas Netbackup 6.0 (MP4) on windows 2003. We have taken lot of backups with infinity retention period from 2003 to till date. Now, we want to expire old than 6 months backups. Right now, concern backups are existing in a pool "infinity", we want if backup image expire then its shift media from infity pool to SCRATCH pool for reuseable. We know how to mark backup expire but it didnt shifting media from infinity to scratch pool.

Any idea?

Regards,

Irfan Ahmad

[Andy_Welburn]

that are now "unassigned" (i.e. no data on them) you should be able to right-click on that media in the GUI, select change & then select the pool you want to move them to (e.g. scratch)

[Andy_Welburn]

may be worth checking the value of RETURN_UNASSIGNED_MEDIA_TO_SCRATCH_POOL, which can be set using the nbemmcmd:

DOCUMENTATION: Certain bp.conf entries, vm.conf entries, and touch files are now set using nbemmcmd in VERITAS NetBackup (tm) 6.0.
http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=TECH43622

From the NetBackup Commands for Windows guide for nbemmcmmd:

"...
If RETURN_UNASSIGNED_MEDIA_TO_SCRATCH_POOL = YES is specified, Media Manager returns expired and unassigned media (media that was originally from the same scratch pool) to the scratch volume pool automatically.
If RETURN_UNASSIGNED_MEDIA_TO_SCRATCH_POOL = NO is specified, the automatic behavior of returning media to the scratch pool is disabled and must be done using one of the Media Manager administration interfaces.
..."
 

[Irfan_Ahmad]

Andy, Thanks for your response. Please guide me how can i set this value for Netbackup 6 environment.

[Andy_Welburn]

the T/N I quoted earlier (altho' specifically for *NIX the same theory should apply).

e.g. within install_path\NetBackup\bin\admincmd

nbemmcmd -listsettings -machinename string

to list what the current values are, and then if you need to change anything:

nbemmcmd -changesetting -return_unassigned_media_to_scratch_pool yes -machinename string

Then the listsettings command in full again to check.

(Something like that anyway!)

***EDITTED for clarity [I hope!]***

[Irfan_Ahmad]

Concern parameter is already set as per your requirement.

C:\Program Files\VERITAS\NetBackup\bin>nbemmcmd -listsettings -machinename lhe-veritas1
NBEMMCMD, Version:6.0MP4(20061102)
The following configuration settings were found:
ALLOW_MULTIPLE_RETENTIONS_PER_MEDIA="no"
DISABLE_DISK_STU_JOB_THROTTLING="no"
DISABLE_STANDALONE_DRIVE_EXTENSIONS="no"
MEDIA_REQUEST_DELAY="0"
MUST_USE_LOCAL_DRIVE="no"
NON_ROBOTIC_MEDIA_ID_PREFIX="A"
MAX_REALLOC_TRIES="1000"
DISALLOW_NONNDMP_ON_NDMP_DRIVE="no"
DO_NOT_EJECT_STANDALONE="yes"
DONT_USE_SLAVE="no"
DRIVE_ERROR_THRESHOLD="2"
MEDIA_ERROR_THRESHOLD="2"
TIME_WINDOW="12"
RETURN_UNASSIGNED_MEDIA_TO_SCRATCH_POOL="yes"
VAULT_CLEAR_MEDIA_DESC="no"
Command completed successfully.

[Andy_Welburn]

Admittedly I'm looking at this from a NB6.5 point of view, but have just tested this here: did a couple of test backups, so volumes taken out of scratch & put into volume pool. Expired the media & they automatically went back to scratch.

Is it possible that these tapes were in the "infinity" pool before the backups were written to them? If that is the case it could be that they are just being "returned" to their original pool....will test that in a minute!

In the meantime, can you manually "change" the affected media so that they are now in your scratch pool as I previously mentioned?

***EDIT***

I can confirm the above point. Manually put a scratch tape into another test pool, ran backup to utilise same, expired tape & it remained in that test pool. I would imagine that's the case in your environment - your tapes were initially in the "infinite" pool so the backups took the media from there. You've manually expired them & they have remained in that alternate pool. Just manually change them to get them into your scratch pool. Had a feeling that would be the case, but it's good to clarify!! It's probably documented somewhere that this is what happens.......