time assign column in media

[noazara]

when NetBackup goes to use a tape and mounts it, it gets assigned -
assigned means that NetBackup took a scratch tape with no assigned date and tried to use the tape today - does not mean that it wrote to it.
Now when NetBackup writes to the tape it gets an images ( this does not change the assigned date).

if the backup is good then the tape has an assigned date, and has a good images.

http://www.symantec.com/connect/blogs/understanding-how-nerbackup-writes-tape

Media gets time assigned when it is mounted on a drive for first time or when a good image has been written on a tape?

[revarooo]

It gets assigned when it has been written to for the first time. I could mount the tape with robtest but it would not be assigned within NetBackups records.

[noazara]

@Revaroo:Media  gets assigned when firstly it is mounted and assign time when data has been written onto it?

Am i correct?

[revarooo]

Yes that is correct.

[Marianne]

The moment that the resource broker identifies a tape to be used by a media server, it Assigns it to the media server and add Assign Time in the volume table of the EMM database. If there is a problem with the media, for example write-protected and gets frozen as a result, the Assign Time along with the Frozen status remains - no data, no image written.

The normal behaviour is that the Assign Time is more or less the same time as first image written.

There is no need for forum questions like this - you can easily enough confirm this in your own environment by checking output of 
nbemmcmd -listmedia -mediaid <media-id> 
on some of your Assigned tapes.

[revarooo]

I just did a test. I let test 1 work completely:

Time Assigned:                  10/03/2013 06:36

I then Suspended that tape

Test 2 I killed bptm with a loop to stop it writing:

It still assigned the time to the new tape:

Time Assigned:                  10/03/2013 06:50

suspended that tape

I then did another test, and killed bpbrm before it could get going, no tape assignment was made to any new tape. So it seems a soon as bptm is going (and writing- the previous kill may not have killed it before it started writing) it's then Assigned.

[noazara]

@Revaroo:So what is the final conclusion?

[revarooo · Accepted solution]

From my test, that as soon as the tape is mounted and written to, the assign time is set. It probably happens just prior to the actual write.

I wouldn't worry about it too much. It will be set at/around the time of the FIRST write to that tape

[noazara]

so as soon as the  tape is automatically mounted in a drive,it is assigned irrspect to the data has been written onto it or not.

Thanks all.

[noazara]

Time Assigned is when NetBackup first allocates the tape to be used.  It may

or may not contain data.  Use the bpmedialist command to be sure.  If the

column is blank,  the tape is definitely unused and does not have any valid

data on it (i.e.  no data in the image catalog, there may be old, expired

data on the tape that will remain there until it is overwritten