I think it mostly depends on your library. If it supports pre-labeled
barcodes, then that is the way to go. That will be your biggest factor
in deciding which way to go. I would hate having to do the manual
process you describe, especially with all the other stuff we need to do.

If it does, make sure the barcode range you pick does not overlap other
tape areas of your business, like the mainframe. That becomes important
if you are sharing offsite locations for DR copies.

With auto media management and barcodes set in the library properties,
there is nothing else to manage. I think it avoids having to worry about
media templates altogether, and it makes it very easy when you are
tracking media problems.

The best way to migrate your data from your existing media is through
attrition I think. NW is pretty flexible in allowing you to cut off
writing to the old media, and only writing to the new, but that too
depends on your library capabilities.

There are any ways to do it, but what I did is keep the last months data
in the library, and then ejected all the old volumes. With the remaining
media set to read only, we immediately started writing to the new media
from the common scratch pool. Over time, you end up deleting the old
media and it goes away.

This can be much more complicated with longer retained data and anything
you might have on archive.

Another thought, maybe this would be a good time to evaluate a VTL
solution? Getting a virtual tape library would solve many of the issues
you might be looking to eliminate.

Hope that helps.

Regards.



-----Original Message-----
From: EMC NetWorker discussion [mailto:NETWORKER AT LISTSERV.TEMPLE DOT EDU] On
Behalf Of Lancy Quadros
Sent: Friday, July 18, 2008 4:34 PM
To: NETWORKER AT LISTSERV.TEMPLE DOT EDU
Subject: [Networker] Barcode labels - Questions!!

We have traditionally been manually labeling our tapes. I want to
eliminate the manual process of peeling the label included with the
tape, handwrite the text according to the label template created in
Networker and then load the tape into the library.

I am looking at using barcode labels. Having no experience using barcode
labels, I would very much appreciate if the group can comment/provide
input on the following:

1. Is it good to buy pre-printed barcode labels or buy a printer?
2. We currently have different label templates to identify the different
backups. For example Database backups are labeled as 'BK_PROD_DB.nnn'
and OS backups are labeled as 'BK_PROD_OS.nnn'. Are there ways in
Networker to maintain similar templates while using barcode labels for
example: for OS backups could be O123456 and database backups could be
P123456?
3. Advantages/disadvantages using barcode labels in general.
4. Any known issues using barcode labels with Networker.

Thanks in advance!

Lancy

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