On Tue, 2005-08-30 at 19:52, Teresa.Kroeker AT THOMSON DOT COM wrote:
> We are running Networker 7.1.3 on Solaris 10 with a StorageTek L180
> library.  We have both SDLT and LTO2 drives in the library.  We have
> auto media management turned on.
>  
> We have set up specific pools to use specific devices and set the
> preferred media type.  We are finding that Networker will try to put the
> wrong type of media in a tape drive (tries to label a blank SDLT tape in
> a LTO2 drive).  
>  
> Is there a solution other than prelabelling the tapes?

In this configuration (which you must accept as being unsupported with plain 
NetWorker) you would be well advised to steer clear of Auto Media Management. 
The problem is that NetWorker has no way of telling what media type an 
unlabelled tape is. I rarely use AMM in any environment, I prefer to use the 
scratch tape method. That way NetWorker knows the difference between a labelled 
scratch tape and something else that is just unknown.

You are doing the right thing by assigning pools for specific devices, it is 
really the only way you can control the situation. You are of course 
complicating the environment by adding pool restrictions but that can't be 
helped. Be prepared for occasional issues when you find that you omitted to 
configure a pool correctly and a backup will wait for a tape in a pool you 
didn't expect, or the annoying "No matching devices or storage nodes" message.

They way to do it in your case is to have two scratch pools, one for SDLT and 
one for LTO2. Each time you deposit some new tapes you must label them into the 
appropriate pool, then set them all to recyclable (you could write a simple 
script to do this bit). Each of these pools must be set to "recycle to other 
pools" and your other pools must be set to "recycle from other pools" at the 
very least. Add the appropriate devices to each of these pools so that they 
cannot be loaded into the wrong devices. This should work for you and you can 
then turn AMM off.

>  
> Are we likely to run into any other problems?

As Tim pointed out, NetWorker isn't too clever with identifying the correct 
devices to use when restoring, so this could cause you an occasional problem.

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