On Fri, 28 Feb 2003 12:40:41 -0800, Thomas, Calvin
<calvin.thomas AT NACALOGISTICS DOT COM> wrote:

>IE if I clone a daily backup to a clone tape in a "yearly clone" pool and
>set the yearly clone tape to manually recyclable, will I still be able to
>browse the contents of this tape after the original expires?  If not, how
>could I tell the media DB to keep the clone browseable for more time?
>

Not easily. To understand what is happening here, you need to understand
the granularity of the media database. A save set has fields associated
with browse and retention. If you have multiple copies (for copies think
clones) then they all have the same browse and retention values. Thus the
browse and retention values are in a table keyed by ssid, whereas you might
think they would be better placed in a table keyed by cloneid.

If you set browse and retention values on a particular save set (at backup
time, or later using nsrmm to change it) then all your clones will expire
at the same time. If they expire, then all copies of the save set will
become recyclable, and the only way to make them browsable again would be
to scan them or to read in an older index from tape using nsrck -L7. This
is messy and long-winded.

The only way I know to get round this problem is to set your browse and
retention to the longest you require, then at the appropriate time run a
script that deletes one clone of the save set (using nsrmm) from the media
database. Making the save set or the volume recyclable will NOT work,
because then you will also make the copy you want to keep recyclable too.
This method is far from perfect because if you need to select individual
save sets to delete, then you may be messing with NetWorker's expiry
mechanisms, and possibly leaving holes in a sequence of diff or incr
backups.

The real solution is for Legato to restructure the media DB so that each
copy of a save set has its own values for browse and retention. This would
mean knock-on effects on the syntax of a few commands. It would also mean a
media DB conversion which would be non-reversible, so would probably have
to be done on a major version upgrade. A lot to ask methinks?

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