DRM: full DBB not returning from VAULT

[imoteb]

Hi all,
we are using DRM to manage tapes. Checkout, away with Iron Mountain, back from Iron Mountain and checkin as scratch. That all works perfectly except for dbb volumes. I know what you think. No, we are not doing del volh t=dbb. I checked the actlog to make sure there is no del volh running at all.
The dbb volumes are not showing up in the volhist, so I assume DRM works as designed - except for getting back the tapes. This are the commands to handle tapes:

create list of tapes to check out: select volume_name,voltype,lib_name from drmedia where state='MOUNTABLE'
check out: move drmedia * wherestate=mountable tostate=vault remove=bulk
create list of tape to retrieve from Iron Mountain: select volume_name from drmedia where state='VAULTRETRIEVE'
move tapes status: move drm * s=dbb wherestate='VAULTRETRIEVE' tostate='ONSITER'


From what I understand, with DB Backup Series Expiration Days: 3 the dbb volumes should be expired and retruned onsite by DRM.

Right? Wrong?

 

[moon-buddy]

If you do a 'q drmstatus' what value does "DB Backup Series Expiration Days" return? In your case, it is 3. If this is set for a long time, then it will take that many days to see tapes back.

In principle, after the Expiration Days has passed, the DB tapes should show as vault retrieve which is then returned through the 'move drmedia' command.

To add:

What version of TSM server are you running?

In one of my old 5.6 environment, I had encountered this issue which I managed through KSH scripts to get back 'orphaned' DBB backup tape. Somehow, the DRM did not work well with DBB tapes.

 

[imoteb]

I know it SHOULD depend on the drm settings. As you see, for this (and all our instances) it is 3. That means, on the 4th day it should be marked as scratch and return onsite. That is what does not happen.

The Version is 6.3.5

 

[moon-buddy]

It looks like the DRM issue with physical DBB tapes still exist.

My current TSM version at 7.1.3 and 6.3.5.1 manages DBB via devclass=file. "DB Backup Series Expiration Days" is set for 8 and true to what is advertised, DBB older that 8 days are deleted on the 9th day and so on.

However, DRM is not engaged the same way like it is with traditional tapes.

From what I had experienced before for the DBB tape, the volume/s was/were not part of the 'vault retrieve' list and had to be tracked through a script I devised.

 

[imoteb]

Now, that sounds like an IBM Support question. I found some cases on the web with similar issues, but no solution. I'll keep you posted.

 

[imoteb]

UPDATE
After working with the IBM support for a while (that was not able to find something), I think it's maybe kind of my own fault. Not really sure how that can happen, but I found an instance with DRMDBBACKUPEXPIREDAYS 60 (standard setting). I KNOW that I checked that, as I did with delete volhist. All the others are good. Maybe it's from back in the days when we used DRM and del volhist together, why there are tapes missing but I cannot find a good reason for it.

Anyway, I now have to order all the tapes lost at Iron Mountain and then develop a script for Icinga to check that settings regularly.