Hi folks,

  My customer has implemented an offsite strategy that calls for tapes from the previous night’s backups to be suspended after the backup cycle so that they can be completely replicated offsite from the production VTL.  A job is run every day at 14:30 pm that suspends the tapes written in the past 24 hours, and a report is published every day at 17:30  pm that lists the tapes that from the backup cycle and whether they are synch-ed to the DR location or not.

Yesterday we noticed that a tape that was listed as synched on the report from 10/03/2011 was not synched on 10/04.  When we checked the logs we found the following:

1.       tape was used for backup during the 09/30 -  10/01 backup cycle, with the job ending sometime around 23:00 on 10/01.

2.       tape was picked up by the suspend job on 10/01 because it was written in the past 24 hours

3.       tape was reported as fully synched to the DR VTL on 10/02 and on 10/03

4.       tape was selected for a backup late on 10/03, and was finally given a tape drive early on 10/04 and started writing (this is, one would assume, why it was no longer synched)

So it appears that the tape was still writing when the suspend script ran.  I guess we expected that the tape would go to SUSPEND mode when the write finished, but 4. above seems to belie that expectation.

Can anyone comment on the expected behavior if an attempt is made to suspend a tape when it is writing? 

Thanks,

  Mark

Mark Hickey

Principal Technical Consultant - Business Continuity

Hitachi Data Systems

North Weymouth, MA

All phones: 781-817-3055