Networker

Re: [Networker] [Fwd: Re: [Networker] Need advice on mminfo command]

2003-11-26 10:29:34
Subject: Re: [Networker] [Fwd: Re: [Networker] Need advice on mminfo command]
From: George Sinclair <George.Sinclair AT NOAA DOT GOV>
To: NETWORKER AT LISTMAIL.TEMPLE DOT EDU
Date: Wed, 26 Nov 2003 10:29:23 -0500
Davina, please see my responses below. Thanks!

Davina Treiber wrote:
>
> George Sinclair wrote:
> > The reason I was concerned about recyclable versus recoverable is
> > because we never recycle tapes that have these savesets on them. Once
> > they're backed up and cloned, we will never back them up again, and
> > there are no plans to recycle the tapes ever. So, at some point, the
> > saveset will be marked as recyclable, but it would be recoverable for a
> > year prior.
>
> George, if you are never going to recycle these save sets, why let them
> become recyclable? Why not just write them in the first place with a
> longer retention, then you won't risk them getting recycled
> accidentally? You can change the retention on existing save sets using
> nsrmm, but you might have a problem with the ones that have already
> become recyclable.

The thing about these tapes is that they are write protected and taken
off site so we would always have the tape, but your suggestion is a very
interesting idea. If I use this nsrmm command to do this, do I have to
give it a specific retention time, i.e. some time long in the future, or
can I pass it a value that will make it never become recyclable? If I
have to give it an actual date then I guess at some point in the future,
we'd run it again and change the date again, ad infinitum to always keep
it recoverable?

What's the best way to implement this? Should I just write a script to
gather all the desired savesets and then have it loop through the nsrmm
command on each one to change the retention time?

Also, is all of this independent of the fact that indexing is turned
off? I assume indexing has nothing to do with this.

>
> > Also, I have seen some cases where a saveset was flagged as
> > recyclable because of some premature abort or SCSI bus reset or some
> > such thing but could never really pin point what exactly caused it, but
> > I know it was only a few hours (days at the most) old.
> Wouldn't this save set be marked as aborted, or incomplete?

Well, that's what I would have thought, too, and I think that's the case
99.9% of the time, but I have seen a few cases where the saveset was
marked recyclable instead. Honest, I've actually seen that on at least
two occasions! So, what I'm thinking is since I can't use an "or"
condition in the query, I could run the mminfo command twice. If the
command returns nothing for recoverable savesets then I could run it
again for recyclable savesets just to be safe. If something is returned,
I could check the date. If the date is beyond the retention policy then
most likely it's a valid saveset; otherwise, it's probably suspect. I
mean, anything that's marked recyclable and is only a month old seems
suspicious as our retention policy is one year. Of course, most of this
gets thrown out the window if we decide to use nsrmm to change the
retention policy on these savesets. In that case, nothing returned
should be recyclable because nothing would be that old since we'd make
the new retention date long in the future. But as you pointed out,
anything that's already recyclable may be too late to change, but those
would be legitimate since they've been around a long time, so we still
might need to do this check just as a precaution. There is always the
remote possibility that such a saveset was marked recyclable for some
weird reason as I pointed out above, but seems slim.

The other thing, too, though, is that I check to ensure that savesets
complete properly. If I see a case where something did not, I would
typically re-run it. I'm thinking in those two cases where the savesets
were marked recyclable, I probably re-ran them. I should have removed
the earlier invalid ones using nsrmm so they would not show up in a
query and then it would be a moot point, but I may not have. I guess if
I can discipline myself to do that, and we change the retention period
to wayyy in the future then I can forget about the whole recycle thing
and only check for recoverable. If it ain't listed as recoverable, it
needs to get backed up.

George

>
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