best way to migrate catalog backup from LTO6 to LTO7

[rbadilla]

Hi all people:

One customer is migrating from SL150 with two LTO6 drives to Quantum I3 (one LTO7 drive and one LTO8) drive).

Have you a safe and speedier way to migrate all backup catalog from LTO6 media to LTO7 one. On the catalog volume there are one LTO7 media and the old LTO6 one, but on the library (new one) there is just LTO7 media. Since LTO8 just write one generation before cartridge instead two as LTO7 (and down to  LTO1); I'm looking to put all catalog on LTO7 media to be able to use both drives instead jut the LTO7.

It is a better and safe method to accomplish this than import LTO6 catalog ? Any advice?

[X2]

Normally, during such a migration, I would expect both the old and new tape libraries connected to the backup domain. If the "migration duration" is longer than catalog retention, just start backing up the catalog to the new library. By the time migration is over, the catalog images on LTO6 would have expired. If retention is longer, you can alwaysduplicate the catalog to the new library's LTO7 tapes. Just make sure you make the LTO7 images as primary.

Ref. duplicating backup images

[Marianne]

@rbadilla 

Do you only want to migrate Catalog backups to new media or ALL images that reside on LTO6 media?

As per @X2 , you can duplicate backups to new media, but it is perfectly fine to put existing LTO6 media in the new library when a restore is needed.

All you need to do is change the density of the LTO7 drive to match the density of the LTO6 media.
So, if existing LTO6 media has hcart3 density, change the LTO7 drive to hcart3 density.

[StoneRam-Simon]

If this is just a NEW library attached to an existing master / media you should just be able to put the LTO6 media into the library, then tell netbackup to inventory it.   Make sure that you have the correct HCART/HCART2/HCART3 defined for the drive and the media, as netbackup uses this to determine which of the drives it will try to load the tape in.  However if the aim is to also do a media refresh you can then get NetBackup to duplicate the contents of the LTO6 to the LTO7 (possibly using NetBackup Vault to help automate it)

Not sure why you want to import catalog?  Is this a NEW environment? In which case you are talking about doing a catalog migration, this can be done using various methods..
1) Restore from backup of catalog (assuming same hostname, and same operating system for master, and that the DISK paths will be the same for where netbackup was installed.
2) Migrate the catalog from one master to the other.  Veritas offer services for this using Catman
3) Look at an alternative to migration that can automate the export and import of the configuration, images and media  between two active Masters with near zero downtime.  It could also help to automate media refresh too by managing the scheduling of duplication activities.  "Tranzman"

Regards

Simon