What my tape expiry taking more time ?

[Karthikeyan_Sun]

Why my tape expiry taking more time to expire the images?

[Stumpr2]

tape expirey has nothing to do with imge expiration

[Deepak_W]

dont get confused between IMAGE EXPIRY and TAPE EXPIRY

"Data expiration [or image expiration]: the date when the backups [images] on the volume [tape] expire"

"Volume expiration [or tape expiration]: Indicates the age of the volume [tape]. If the volume expiration date is reached, the volume is considered too old to be reliable and no further mounts in write mode are allowed. NetBackup can mount the volume in read mode but writes a message to the system application log that the expiration date has been reached. If the column is blank, the volume has no expiration date. Note: This is the expiration date for the media itself not the expiration of any images stored on the media"

[Nitesh]

yes this is right 

Tape expiry date is when the tape is going to expire. Once the tape expires all the images in the tape will also expire.

Image expiry date is when the images on the tapes expire but the tape expiry is still not met. This case will occur when muntiple retention is enable on a single tape

[Deepak_W]

FIRST as now you have got the defference....

SECOND multiple retention on the same media is not at all a best practice to follow...

you can go through the admin guide for more details on the same...

[Stumpr2]

Tape expiry is when the physical use of the tape is forbidden for any NEW writing. It is still available for reading. If there are images with a retention of infinity then they will NOT exxpire even though the tape expiry has been met. They will be able to be read until about the year 2035. The reason people use tape expiry is to make sure that an old tape that may no longer be reliable will not be used for new backups. it's kinda like you would not put new wine in an old wine skin. Image expiry has nothing to do with tape expiry.

Image expiry is the date when an individual image has reached it's useful lifetime according to the retention applied during the backup. A tape could have a hundred images on it. Some of the images could have met the retention criteria and expired and some of them may still have an active image on the tape. It is possible to manually expire ALL images on a tape or to extend the retention to infinity for all the images on the tape. Tape expiry has nothing to do with the image expiry.

NetBakup will not de-ssign a tape and place it into scratch until ALL images on the tape have expired. The tape also must also not have a tape expiry that has been exceeded as explained in the first paragraph.

.

[Andy_Welburn]

;)

[Karthikeyan_Sun]

I know about the Tape and Image Expiry concepts but My Problem is Explained here in detail:

We got a setup to backup Windows Unix Exchange NDMP and VMWare and more..

When i try to expire the NDMP or Unix Medias my expiry is done in seconds.

Same expiry doing in Windows Medias taking more and more time to complete.

I checked and it is not problem with server as we got new server sometime back and facing same issue still.

I hope any one of you may come across in this issue

Let me know who are all and what you did ??

[Stumpr2 · Accepted solution]

First off it is a bad practice to change the expiration date of an image. It should be avoided or minimized. Always pay close attention to the retention periods set up in the policy schedules and stick to them as much as possible.

If you must expire or extend an image on a tape then some of  things that can cause a slow procedure are:
1. catalog compression
2. number of files in the image
3. image spanning media
4. multiplexed images

Please do not expire or extend the images retention as a primary procedure. it should only be done when absolutely required. Plan your policy schedules carefully the first time.

[Karthikeyan_Sun]

1. catalog compression - not enabled
2.number of files in the image - we enabled Media Mutplexing with 32; i know this is not recommented but we dont have much drives to work;
3.image spanning media- we do have this enabled
4. multiplexed images- we have media multiplzing enabled.

This is our currnet setup. But is there any way to reduce this expiry time ?

[Stumpr2]

SLSIA

[Will_Restore]

ha!  I had to look it up. :)

[Karthikeyan_Sun]

Thanks Stumpr

[CY]

If you don't have many tape drives, try configure disk storage unit (DSU or DSSU) to let your backups go to disk first. 

Media Multiplex is not such a good idea nowadays since there are many other technical solutions.  Think about having 32 backup streams going into a tape drive and bump into a bad tape - you get status 84 for 32 backup jobs!!! :(