Hello Curtis

OK, relabeling sounds good even though I'm not sure if the degaussing concern
applies to AIT tapes.    But since the tapes are in the library then ideally I
would need to be able to:
     1) take a specific drive offline so no backups will be using it
     2) command the robot to put the specific tape in that specific drive
     3) use bplabel with the -u or the -d specifier to label the tape in that
drive
     4) command the drive to eject the tape
     5) command the robot to return the tape to it's slot
     6) release the drive for use

I think I can do 1, 3, 4, and 6.   Any suggestions for 2 and 5?   The robotics
that I have is an ADIC Scalar 1000.

Is there a way to relabel the tapes without having to specify the tape drive
i.e.: tell Netbackup to write such and such a label on barcode such and such?

I don't have a standalone test station with a tape drive which would be ideal
for carefully labelling tapes or doctoring labels so simply removing the tapes
from the library to work on them separately isn't an option yet.

Currently, the tapes are in a separate pool.   Unfortunately, the class had been
configured in the past for the default 99 concurrent jobs and with
multi-streaming so even though there's only three clients affected by this rapid
recycle requirement, the number of active tapes in the dedicated pool has grown
to 7 which is the number of available drives minus 1 (1 is reserved for
restores).   I've turned off multi-streaming and set the number of concurrent
jobs down to 3 in hopes that the number of active tapes will roll back but when
it fills an active tape, it allocates a fresh tape to continue rather than
another active tape hence the number of active tapes is staying at 7.   My guess
is that the only way to ensure the number of active tapes roll back to 3 or less
would be to freeze all but one of the active tapes and relabel them after a week
when they expire.   Probably the best thing to do would be to freeze all 7
active tapes and relabel them when they expire.

Ideally, I would like all three clients to multiplex to the same tape so that
the number of expiration dates on a given tape is at a minimum (preferably just
1 expiration date);  of course if runtimes exceed the desired window then I
would want to use more drives.   However setting multiplexing to three and the
number of concurrent jobs to three doesn't ensure single drive use (last night's
run used two drives).   Any idea how to force all three to multiplex to one
drive?

Of course, I don't mind using more tapes than necessary so if there's a way to
constrain Netbackup to only allow one expiration date per tape on a per volume
pool basis then that would be fine.   Unfortunately, as near as I can tell
Netbackup can only constrain by retention levels not expiration dates (sorta
misses the whole point of such constraints).

I guess I could set up seven pools and schedule each day's backup to a separate
pool such that by the time the given day of the week comes around, the tape
would've expired but would the active tape expire before or after it gets
appended to? (I guess either a retention level of 6 days must be set or there's
the possibility of a run being a minute before last weeks run and allocating the
active tape.

So, I need the command sequence to relabel a tape while still in the library,
and methods to reduce the number of expiration dates on a tape either by forced
multiplexing (not perfect in that some tapes will still have two dates) or
having Netbackup enforce such exclusions.

Regards,
John I Wang
Sr. Systems Engineer
Steverson Information Professionals

---
Enron Broadband Services
Enron Building 1472c
ph (713) 345-4291
fax (713) 646-8063


|--------+----------------------->
|        |          curtis@collte|
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|        |          11/08/00     |
|        |          06:48 PM     |
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  >-------------------------------------------------------------------|
  |                                                                   |
  |       To:     John Wang/Contractor/Enron Communications@Enron     |
  |       Communications, veritas-bu AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu           |
  |       cc:                                                         |
  |       Subject:     Re: [Veritas-bu] To ensure overwrites          |
  >-------------------------------------------------------------------|



I would:
1. Create a pool just for those backups
2. Force those backups to that pool (class definition)
3. Relabel tapes older than a week.  (Relabeling them renders them unusable.)

You DON'T want to degauss tapes if you plan on reusing them, depending on
the drive.  A degaussed tape returned to a DLT drive will take about 2
hours to get ready for use.  (It has to rewrite the headers on boths ends
of the tape.)

At 03:13 PM 11/8/00 -0600, John_Wang AT enron DOT net wrote:


>Hello Everyone
>
>We have a political requirement to ensure that certain backup images do not
>exist after a weeks time.   Any way to ensure that a tape gets overwritten as
>soon as possible?   Can I prevent multiple images from being stored on
>tapes in
>a specific pool? i.e.: prevent multiple expiry dates on a given
>tape.   Short of
>removing expired tapes for degaussing, which will be done if that's the
>solution, what can be done to meet this requirement?
>
>Comments, ideas?
>
>Regards,
>John I Wang
>Sr. Systems Engineer
>Steverson Information Professionals
>
>---
>Enron Broadband Services
>Enron Building 1472c
>ph (713) 345-4291
>fax (713) 646-8063
>
>
>_______________________________________________
>Veritas-bu maillist  -  Veritas-bu AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu
>http://mailman.eng.auburn.edu/mailman/listinfo/veritas-bu

---
W. Curtis Preston, Principal Consultant at Collective Technologies
Email: curtis AT colltech DOT com                (Best way to contact me)
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