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Re: [Networker] Recycle to/from other pools
2008-04-14 07:16:37
On Fri, 11 Apr 2008 at 5:24pm, Davina Treiber wrote:
Francis Swasey wrote:
I have experimented with using the Recycle to/from other pools option to
have a scratch pool that will automatically feed tapes into my clone pools
as required (allowing my operations staff to work on things other than
daily checking the number of empty volumes in the clone pools and manually
moving tapes from scratch into the clone pool).
The problem I have stumbled across is that because (for historical reasons)
we use the label templates (instead of having every tape labeled with its
barcode), I have found that when a tape is recycled from the scratch pool
into one of the clone pools that it retains the label it had in the scratch
pool. Hence I now have an offsite tape labeled "Scratch.0561" instead of
"Offsite.10101" which is very bad for all the historical reasons we didn't
choose to use barcode labels.
Is there anyone that is using Recycle to/from other pools and is also using
label templates and has it working?
Feel free to tell me it can't work the way I want too...
I think you are in a minority of users who have bar codes but don't match
them to labels.
If I am, I'm about to become a vocal minority.
If you had to say what was the correct behaviour in this situation, I think
it would be a difficult and controversial decision. Some would say that it
was totally wrong for a tape's label to change after relabelling, as it would
make it very difficult to track the tape. Others might say that when
relabelling a tape the label should follow the label template. Whichever way
you decided you would not please everyone.
If you believe that the tapes label should never change, then you have
already left the default jukebox configuration and are using bar codes
as your internal tape labels. If you have turned off that default, then
when you use "nsrjb -L -b 'pool x' -S 32" the label will be set to the
template for pool x. When you later issue "nsrjb -L -b 'pool y' -S 32"
the label will be CHANGED to follow the template for pool y. It is only
if you add the -R to the nsrjb that it is documented in the man page
that the label will not be changed. Therefore, if I am using label
templates and I tell networker to recycle from pool x to pool y, I
expect networker to use pool y's label template when it labels the tape
into that pool. What I am finding is that NW is issuing the equivalent
of "nsrjb -LYR -b 'pool y' -S 32" which takes the tape with pool x's
label and transfers it to pool y.
Is it nor possible for you to start matching barcodes? In my experience it is
the best option except for where barcode readers are not available, such as
on standalone drives or very low end libraries.
We have been a NetWorker shop since 1994. Back in those days, we didn't
have barcode readers (or a jukebox) and we hand wrote labels on the
tapes. Therefore, it was a moot point. When we got our first jukebox
with a barcode reader, we changed to using barcodes but kept the media
pool structure we had. I've been taking care of the backup system for a
year now and with seven years of tapes in the vaults, that's a lot of
history to overcome with what is really a political battle over
something that means very little. Not anything I'm really interested in
changing. Would using the barcode as the label be useful? In certain
cases it would. However, there are other folks here who argue
strenuously that it causes problems because you can't tell by the label
(think of the output of volumes command inside recover) what kind of
tape you are going after and whether it will need to be returned from
the vault or not...
--
Frank Swasey | http://www.uvm.edu/~fcs
Sr Systems Administrator | Always remember: You are UNIQUE,
University of Vermont | just like everyone else.
"I am not young enough to know everything." - Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
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