You're very close.  

Remember that there are two products, NetBackup and Media Manger.

NetBackup has a mediaDB (on the media server), which is why you have
to use the -h flag and why it wants to mount the tape on the original
server by default.  Since the mediaDB lives on the media server, only
one server can write to a given tape (once it's written to and until
it expires - which corresponds to being assigned and your obervation
of the summary).

MM has the volDB, and that is where assignment is done.

Under normal operation, these two databases are kept in sync
automatically.  

You can decomission a media server w/o ever having to do any imports.
It's a bit easier if you do it right while the system is still
available.  

John_Wang AT enron DOT net writes:
> 
> 
> Hello Everyone
> 
> I'm loosing one of my two media server/Scalar 1000 in a move next
> week.  All the tapes in the unit will be pulled and put in banker
> boxes in case restores require them.  However, I'm thinking that I
> should probably change the residency of the tapes, probably with the
> vmchange command.
> 
> It seems to me that when a tape gets assigned, some portion of it's
> assignment is kept by the media server that assigned the tape rather
> than in the volume database, I'm concluding that because I often
> have to reference which media server assigned the tape when I use
> the bpexpdate command by using the "-host" flag and the man pages
> for bpexpdate mentions that the media catalog is on the media server
> that wrote the tape.  I've also noticed that if I eject a tape from
> one tape library and inject it into the other, although it shows up
> in the new volume group, the tape summary still shows it listed
> under the server that it was assigned by; no such weirdness if the
> tape was unassigned.
> 
> Since I'll be loosing that media server, I'd like to transfer
> whatever entries are in there over to the other media server so that
> I'll simply have to inject the appropriate tapes for a given
> restore.
> 
> Comments anyone?  Has anyone decommissioned a media server before
> but kept the tapes?  I'd like to avoid having to delete the tapes
> and importing them again.
> 
> Regards,
> John I Wang
> Sr. Systems Engineer
> Steverson Information Professionals
> 
> ---
> Enron Networks
> Enron Building room 3427e
> ph (713) 345-4888
> cell (832) 493-1263
> fax (713) 646-8462
> pg pagejwang AT skytel DOT com or 1-877-390-4155
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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