Darren
Too many comments made, so in summary:

1) I look after my catalog, have my own DR plans, and offline / off-site
storage for this, so I am not worried about this.

2) Agreed query the catalog or use AM - it tells you the tape. I am all for
this.... It's the other site that has all these issues, not myself! Why they
cannot adopt this is unclear.

3) Putting the info on the label is not a problem - it was done here with
over 60 LTO1 Tapes and never a problem. And again, part of our backup
procedures state that in the event of a major disaster, we need to identify
easily our most crital systems that need to be restored. In my case, we
label them from their corresponding volume pools - its no big deal, and
keeps everyone happy. Does not take that long either :-)

4) agreed, I have gone through an import of over 30 tapes and it was a
HEADACHE!!! Why did this happen? Because someone deleted the catalog, then
lost the tapes !!!!! Hence why I implemented off-site / on-site cat backups,
file level cat backups and ensure the catalog is intact and documented :-)

Hope this makes things clearer !

Regards

Simon Weaver
3rd Line Technical Support
Windows Domain Administrator 

EADS Astrium Limited, B23AA IM (DCS)
Anchorage Road, Portsmouth, PO3 5PU

Email: Simon.Weaver at Astrium-eads.net



-----Original Message-----
From: Darren Dunham [mailto:ddunham at taos.com] 
Sent: 09 November 2006 15:56
To: Veritas-bu at mailman.eng.auburn.edu
Subject: Re: [Veritas-bu] Recognise Media from NBU


> Paul
> Ok, thats fine relying on the catalog (the application catalog?), but 
> probably not alot of help if the catalog is unavailable - assume this 
> is=  the case as I see the catalog as a single point of failure from a 
> security / audit perspective.

That's the entire job of the catalog.  Backups of the catalog and care of it
should keep it safe and secure.  

If you're worried about what to do if you lost your catalog, now is the time
to find out, not when it actually happens.  

All of my procedures and tasks assume the catalog is available or that I'm
working an issue to reconstruct it from tapes or other copies.

> again, from security and audit, we do label the tapes Month number + 
> the month volume pool it comes from. This is essential, because I dont 
> want to be in the same boat as the other site, where they have 
> thousands of tapes, and do not seem to know what tapes belong to what 
> backup client.

Depending on the size, that amount of information just doesn't seem to be
sufficient.  I would think I'd have hundreds of tapes in any given
month/pool combination.  If I need to match a tape to a particular client, I
run a quick script that queries the catalog.

> I do not wish to accomplish anything.... I was looking at a way of 
> trying to make their life easier to load tapes back into the library 
> when a restore from a certain tape is needed.

I just don't think you'd be able to put enough information on the label (and
keep them organized around it) to predict exactly which tape you'd need
beforehand unless you used lots of different pools.  And keeping track of
that many pools can be a different problem.

> If we are saying that the use of Activity Monitor is better than 
> sitting down and labelling tapes, thats fine :-) I just wanted to be 
> sure nothing simple was being overlooked.

In most cases, I think that's the best thing to do.  You can also hit the
preview button before the restore begins.  

> BTW, dont expect the catalog to be unavailable, but I would not rely 
> on that one source (especially if it was lost and unrecoverable!). I 
> dont want to be looking at a vault of 1000+ tapes to be imported !!

I think that's exactly why I do expect the catalog to be available.
Importing that many tapes would be horrendous so I'm going to take care to
keep it available.  Where is your backup copy of the catalog?  Where else is
it?  How is that location recorded (for you and for others)? Have you ever
tested a catalog recovery so that you know what to expect?

-- 
Darren Dunham                                           ddunham at taos.com
Senior Technical Consultant         TAOS            http://www.taos.com/
Got some Dr Pepper?                           San Francisco, CA bay area
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