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how to get a Vault list tape from specific backup

Gadit
Level 3

Good morning.

I hope you can help me.

We are use a Vault system to tapes, these tapes are a secondary backup of a primary backup.

The primary backup expires in 6 months, but the vaults expire in 10 years.

The primary backups from Oracle's databases are make with RMAN and in netbackup policy we executes a script that launches the RMAN processes.

The Primary backup is copied to tape, and this tapes stay inside the robot, the secondary backup is a duplicated from de primary Copy, this second copy is saved into a tape and carrie on to another location.

A database's backup are approximately between 8 and 12 tapes.

When we need to restore a backup older than 6 months, we have to use the Vault tapes.

RMAN requests the ID_Tape from the primary copy.

We need to know if there is any command that tells us which copy of Vault is relevant to that primary ID_Tape.


for example:

  Primary backup tapes            Vault tapes
        
LTOBD123                                LTOBD800
LTOBD153                                LTOBD567
LTOBD238                                LTOBD999
LTOBD279                                LTOBD545

knowing the date of the backup, the ID_TAPES of the primary copy, and the name of the client, how can I get the list of respective Vault tapes?

Thank you very much for the help!

1 ACCEPTED SOLUTION

Accepted Solutions

Marianne
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My 2c:

There is no 1-to-1 relation between copy1 tapes and vault tapes.

Vault duplication copy images to a destination STU and pool.
It is therefore possible that the images on LTOBD123 will not be identical to images on LTOBD800.

Before copy 1 images expire, bpimagelist -L will show copy 1 and copy 2 media id's.

After copy 1 has expired, copy 2 automatically becomes the primary copy and information about tape used for copy 1 is removed from the image database.

After the 6 months when copy 1 tapes have expired, you can use bpimagelist command to list the tapes for the Oracle backups. Something like: 

bpimagelist -client clientname -d mm/dd/yyyy -e mm/dd/yyyy -media -pt Oracle -U
(where -d is start-date and -e is end-date)

Please note that -e is note the date when the policy ended. 
The -d and -e options will give a list of all Oracle backups started during the period.

HTH

 

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8 REPLIES 8

Gadit
Level 3

no one knows? 

Marianne
Moderator
Moderator
Partner    VIP    Accredited Certified

My 2c:

There is no 1-to-1 relation between copy1 tapes and vault tapes.

Vault duplication copy images to a destination STU and pool.
It is therefore possible that the images on LTOBD123 will not be identical to images on LTOBD800.

Before copy 1 images expire, bpimagelist -L will show copy 1 and copy 2 media id's.

After copy 1 has expired, copy 2 automatically becomes the primary copy and information about tape used for copy 1 is removed from the image database.

After the 6 months when copy 1 tapes have expired, you can use bpimagelist command to list the tapes for the Oracle backups. Something like: 

bpimagelist -client clientname -d mm/dd/yyyy -e mm/dd/yyyy -media -pt Oracle -U
(where -d is start-date and -e is end-date)

Please note that -e is note the date when the policy ended. 
The -d and -e options will give a list of all Oracle backups started during the period.

HTH

 

I know that command.

But the problem is that more than 100 tapes are recorded in a week. So determining which tapes are vaulting and which tapes are normal backups is difficult.

Now we have an EXCEL record with that information, but I was wanted to automate the process with some report or something similar.

I think after reviewing and reading the documentation, at least for the moment it is not possible!

thank you very much for your reply.

mph999
Level 6
Employee Accredited

NBU actually has a Vault option, although it is a licensed feature (so not free).

You may wish to consider this if possible, it would make your life  lot easier - NBU Vault has the abiity to make duplications, run 'vault' catalog backup and eject tapes.  It automatically tracks tapes, and will notify which tapes need to be recalled once they expire.

Actually what Marianne suggested can work with a little more effort to script the bpimagelist and other commands.

A vaulted tape has additional attributes such as:

- vaulted date
- offsite volume group

So from bpimagelist output you can get the list of tapes for a single image, then using the list perform "vmquery -m" to get the above attributes and you will be able to tell which tapes are vaulted.

Marianne
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I think I understand what @Gadit is asking - 

The issue is with RMAN that stores the media id's of the 1st copy. 
The problem is that when copy 1 expires, RMAN still only knows about copy 1  media-id.

This is why the request is for a 'utility' to map copy1-media-id to copy2-media-id.

In my view, this is not possible as there is no one-to-one relation between copy1 and copy2 tapes.
Copy1 image for a particular day may be appended to a previous day's tape that continued onto another tape, while the duplicate may have fitted onto a single tape.

Best would be to script bpimagelist proactively to list all copy1 and copy2 tapes for each image done on a daily basis, or else when a restore is needed after copy1 has expired, run bpimagelist -media to list tapes needed for restore.
I'm pretty sure that is what most other users do with duplicated RMAN tapes.

Exactly Marianne!

The problem is with RMAN, because RMAN only knows the copy 1.

if the copy 1 expires RMAN doesn't know what is the equivalent Vault's tapes.

However, when RMAN tells to NETBACKUP "I need this tape!, NETBACKUP tell me; give me this vaulting tape"

if the vault is 1 single tape, there is no problem, but when there are 10 tapes, RMAN requests one tape at a time, and until the first tape is not available, it doesn't ask for the second tape.

I can't call the storage guy 10 times to look for 10 tapes for only one restore.  :(

if I look for the tapes by date. the listing returns all the vault tapes from this date, approximately 30 tapes.

so  I try to select by date, client and by copy 2 but I can not get the list I need.