On Mon, 7 Oct 2002 17:48:36 -0400, George Sinclair
<George.Sinclair AT NOAA DOT GOV> wrote:

>We have a new tape library that uses LTO media, and I need some advice
>on the merits of setting up a new pool for this media versus using our
>existing pool.
>All criticisms welcome. We have our primary server running on Solaris
>with one ATL DTL tape library, and one storage node server (runs Linux)
>now running two tape libraries: an ATL SDLT and a Storagetek LTO.
>
>Here's the deal. Up until this, we've been using only DLT and SDLT media
>on the two ATL libraries and only two pools: ATL and FUL. The ATL pool
>is used for anything other than fulls, and the FUL pool is used
>exclusively for fulls. Well, I decided to stick with the FUL pool for
>any the full backups to LTO media, but I thought it might be slick to
>have a new pool named LTO to handle the non-full backups to any LTO
>media. Of course, since groups cannot overlap pools, this required
>having to create a new LTO counterpart group for each current group and
>then add every client to this new group, but no big deal.
>
>Here's the problem, though. Since I don't want to launch two groups that
>would perform the same backups, I'm now forced to decide which clients I
>want to back up to the LTO library and then remove them from any group
>that's a member of the ATL pool, while keeping them in the LTO group.
>This means that NetWorker will not be able to decide for itself which
>savesets to spill over to the LTO library versus the SDLT library.
>However, if I keep everything in the ATL pool, then I don't need these
>extra groups and NetWorker can decide which library to direct the
>savesets to. Can anyone recommend any advice one way or the other?
>Advantages or disadvantages? Is there any way to have separate pools and
>allow NetWorker to decide for itself which one to use? I didn't think
>so, and we do not use auto-media management for this very reason as
>NetWorker simply labels the tapes based on whatever pool is needed at
>the time.
>
>We can't use our existing DLT type bar codes anyway because these are
>non-stick and use the built-in grooves on the DLT and SDLT tapes. The LTO
>media doesn't have these, so we'd end up having to buy another set of
>stick style bar codes for them regardless. I guess I thought it might
>help to organize our media better if we had a separate pool since most
>of our tapes end up in the non-FUL pool anyway.
>

I don't think your scenario justifies creating a new pool. IME it is best
to keep the pools to a minimum, and the main reason that I would use to
introduce a new pool would be to accomodate a different retention policy,
since it doesn't make sense to mix retention policies on the same tape.
There are very few other good reasons, and it is all too easy to find
yourself in a situation where you have backups going to pools where you
don't expect them to go, particularly to Default.

Of course you cannot use the DLT barcodes on the LTO tapes. As well as them
being physically different (not sticky) the barcode format contains the
media type. You will need new barcodes, my advice would be to use a new
numbering sequence but add them to the same pool as the existing DLT tapes.
You have presumably chosen a pool naming convention that matches your
barcodes, but this does not need to constrict you.

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