Removing data from old tapes

[stamfordbrad]

Hi,

I have a lot of old data on LTO2 tapes that i want on LTO4. Its very time consuming moving the data and our lto2 drives are out of support and keep having problems. What i want to know is can i mark all the old lto2 tapes as destroyed and let all the data that still exist get backed up again onto lto4 ?

Also I have large backups on notes servers because the DB are getting backed up as changing everynight. Is there another solution to this other than transaction logging?

Many thanks in advance

Bradley

 

[chad_small]

If the data is on offsite volumes you could use the MOVE DATA command to have TSM move the data from local tapes to new offsite tapes. If the volumes hold primary data then you'll have to mount them and read the data off.

 

[moon-buddy]

What type of data does the LTO 2 tape hold? - online data or off site data, or you only have one pool?

If you have only one pool of LTO 2 data, marking them destroyed would mean loosing the data. If you mark the online LTO 2 tape pool as destroyed, TSM will try to recreate the data from the off site tapes. Here is where catch 22 occurs. If the off site tapes are LTO 2 tapes, then you are again faced with the LTO 2 tape drive problems!

For the LTO 2 tapes that are off site tapes, you can do move data.

 

[stamfordbrad]

Hi,

I have the data in both the onsite and offsite storage pools. I understand what you guys are saying. But what im asking is if i marked both the offsite and onsite tapes as destroyed would tsm backup any existing data it doesnt have on lto4.
IE

file 1 exists on a server and is on lto2 offsite and onsite tapes, but has never changed so has never backed up onto LTO4. If i was to mark the tapes that have all backups of file 1 would file 1 get backed up tonight as a new file?

Cheers

 

[moon-buddy]

If the files still exist, the it will be backed up BUT what happens to the versions? Are you not concerned about them? How about other data that are not on the servers anymore?

This is what we mean and try to say.

 

[stamfordbrad]

Sorry my misunderstanding, I thought you didnt understand what I was saying. Yes i am aware we would lose the versions this way. The data on LTO2 is older than we are required to keep apart from some files which have never changed but would be a pain to move. So I was thinking the easy way was to destroy the old tapes and get the files that have never changed backed up again by lto4. It sounds like it would work. Thanks guys for your help
Brad