Offsite tape vaulting question

[Fabio]

This question may be a bit naive, but I'm looking to do offsite tape vaulting, and I'm looking for some more info. The environment was setup before I was hired, but offsite tape vaulting has never been done.

Our environment:
RHEL 7.3
SP version 8.1.4
primary backup - directory-container stgpool on raid disks
TS4300 tape library - we have a script run daily that uses the protect command to copy to tape.
All of these are in the same server room.

The SP knowledge centre has the necessary info on the command to remove/replace tapes. My question is more about how it works. I'm guessing, I just remove all tapes that have data on them (ie, not scratch) and move them to a separate building. Is this correct?

And, after that, wouldn't the server need to copy the entire storage pool over to tape again? Which, would take a long time I imagine.

Supposing I want to do this every 2 weeks, or every month. Would I remove data tapes, and then put the old ones back, and set them as scratch?




Output:
Protect: TSM01>q libvol

Library Name Volume Name Status Owner Last Use Home Devic-
Element e Type
------------ ----------- ---------------- ---------- --------- ------- ------
TS4300_LIB A00000L7 Private CopyCont- 1,001 LTO
ainer
TS4300_LIB A00001L7 Private CopyCont- 1,002 LTO
ainer
TS4300_LIB A00002L7 Scratch 1,003 LTO
TS4300_LIB A00003L7 Scratch 1,004 LTO
TS4300_LIB A00004L7 Scratch 1,005 LTO
TS4300_LIB A00005L7 Scratch 1,006 LTO
TS4300_LIB A00006L7 Scratch 1,007 LTO
TS4300_LIB A00007L7 Scratch 1,008 LTO
TS4300_LIB A00008L7 Scratch 1,009 LTO
TS4300_LIB A00009L7 Scratch 1,010 LTO
TS4300_LIB A00010L7 Scratch 1,011 LTO
TS4300_LIB A00011L7 Scratch 1,012 LTO
TS4300_LIB A00012L7 Scratch 1,013 LTO
TS4300_LIB A00013L7 Scratch 1,014 LTO
TS4300_LIB A00014L7 Scratch 1,015 LTO
TS4300_LIB A00015L7 Scratch 1,016 LTO
TS4300_LIB A00016L7 Private DbBackup 1,017 LTO
TS4300_LIB A00017L7 Private CopyCont- 1,018 LTO
ainer
TS4300_LIB A00018L7 Private DbBackup 1,019 LTO
TS4300_LIB A00019L7 Private DbBackup 1,020 LTO

 

[marclant]

Everytime you run protect stgpool type-local, it copies to tape extents not previously sent to tape. The location of the tape is not relevant to that process.

So you can do this daily, move the new copy tapes out to the vault daily. The protect also does the reclamation by default of the copy tapes, you would not notice this because the tapes were in the library. Once the copy tapes are offsite, you'll want to bring them back onsite once returned to scratch.

More info here:
https://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/en/SSEQVQ_8.1.5/srv.admin/t_contcp_stgpool_rotate.html