In regard to: [Networker] Moving to a multi tape drive system, Roger Morris...:
We have networker 7.6.2 on RHEL with a quantum px502. Looking to update
the system with a multi drive jukebox, possibly the Quantum i40 system.
We have Ultrium-3 tapes right now, but plan on moving to Ultrium-5
tapes.
I assume you're going with Ultrium-5 because you want them to be able to
read your Ultrium-3 tapes. If you're not talking about a huge number of
tapes, I think you would be better off going with Ultrium-6 and just
cloning from your U3 tapes to your new U6 tapes.
We looked at both U5 and U6 drives when we purchased our Quantum i40 just
a couple months ago. Despite the fact that U6 has only been out about a
year, there wasn't much of a price hit by going with U6, and it greatly
increased the capacity of the library.
How does networker handle multiple drives, does the next job just use
whatever drive is available or do media pools have to be assigned to
specific tape drives?
It's not multiple drives you're worried about, it's multiple drive
*types*. Mixed media types can be done with NetWorker, but I wouldn't
say it's one of its core capabilities. There used to a be an add-on
product that made mixed-media much easier, but I'm not even certain it's
available anymore. It was typically for very large libraries, though.
I highly recommend that when you hook up your new library to your existing
backup server, you go into "Devices" in NetWorker Administrator, then
expand your servername, then the *old* library name, and then select each
drive and do "Properties..." and in the "Status" area, check the box
for "read only".
Once you've done that, your old drives will *not* be used for writing
any new backups, but they can still be used for reading your old backups.
Label some tapes into the necessary media pool(s) in your new library and
they should be used for all backups going forward. If you do some
GUI-based or scripted cloning, you could copy the savesets from your U3
drives to the U5 or U6 drives and speed-up how long you need to keep
around the older library. You could potentially migrate everything to
the new library and retire the old one in a very short amount of time.
Good luck with the new library! Are you going with the encryption option?
Contact me off-list once you have it; I'll be interested to know your
thoughts on it.
Tim
--
Tim Mooney Tim.Mooney AT ndsu DOT
edu
Enterprise Computing & Infrastructure 701-231-1076 (Voice)
Room 242-J6, IACC Building 701-231-8541 (Fax)
North Dakota State University, Fargo, ND 58105-5164
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