netbackup master server setup with standalon tape drive only

[kabacsk]

Dear All,

I have HP LTO5 ultrium drive at one of our sites and one master server enterprise licence that is not use. I thought that I could use this with a tape drive as an (AVR) standalone drive to bakcup some data everyday.
I have installed HW for the server and win 2008r2 enviroment is also installed, with installed HP tape drive drivers on it. I have also installed nb master server software 7.5 as well.  It can see the drive as well with ready status.
My questions how could I use single drive to save data on it?
How can I read the tape content without a barcode reader in tape drive?
Is it possible at all to use NB master server this way with only a single drive without robot and  barcode reader?
What is the process of creation volumes, nb configurations?

I have libraries other sites but here I think I have to set volumes one by one somehow and put them to standalone volume group?

Can someone guide me through this?

Thank you in advance

Regards

Karoly

[sdo]

Absolutely no problem doing this.  If the tape media have already be 'electronically' labelled - then no problem, e.g. if they have already been used once elsewehere then the media will have a logical label, and NetBackup will be just fine.

If you are using brand-new media, then you have to use the Admin GUI, or the bplabel command, to first logically label the media.  And of course, it's always a good idea to apply a physical sticky blank label on standalong media with written text to match the logical label that you apply to new media.

[Marianne · Accepted solution]

Standalone tape drive is possible, but a nightmare to manage.

You will need to manually add media-id's, then insert the tapes one-by-one to pre-label them.
AVRD can only read the internal label, so this is why you need to label tapes manually to ensure the external and internal labels match.

Some previous posts about standalone tape drives:

unable to take the backup in standalone drive using netbackup 

Standalone Tape, how to proceed if the second tape is requried. 

[kabacsk]

Dear Marianne and sdo, Thank you for the fast reply it worked. Firstly I had to create the volume at standalone in admin gui after that from cmd bplabel extend yours with drive and host name with all that parameters it worked like charm. Thank you once more Regards Karoly