On Aug 2, 2013, at 11:26, Tim Mooney <Tim.Mooney AT NDSU DOT EDU> wrote:

> In regard to: [Networker] Moving to a multi tape drive system, Roger 
> Morris...:
> 
>> We have networker 7.6.2 on RHEL with a quantum px502.  Looking to update
>> the system with a multi drive jukebox, possibly the Quantum i40 system.
>> We have Ultrium-3 tapes right now, but plan on moving to Ultrium-5
>> tapes.
> 
> I assume you're going with Ultrium-5 because you want them to be able to
> read your Ultrium-3 tapes.  If you're not talking about a huge number of
> tapes, I think you would be better off going with Ultrium-6 and just
> cloning from your U3 tapes to your new U6 tapes.
> 
> We looked at both U5 and U6 drives when we purchased our Quantum i40 just
> a couple months ago.  Despite the fact that U6 has only been out about a
> year, there wasn't much of a price hit by going with U6, and it greatly
> increased the capacity of the library

We are looking at trading in the 502.  
If trade in is negligible, that would change our strategy a bit.  


> 
>> How does networker handle multiple drives, does the next job just use
>> whatever drive is available or do media pools have to be assigned to
>> specific tape drives?
> 
> It's not multiple drives you're worried about, it's multiple drive
> *types*.  Mixed media types can be done with NetWorker, but I wouldn't
> say it's one of its core capabilities.  There used to a be an add-on
> product that made mixed-media much easier, but I'm not even certain it's
> available anymore.  It was typically for very large libraries, though.
> 
> I highly recommend that when you hook up your new library to your existing
> backup server, you go into "Devices" in NetWorker Administrator, then
> expand your servername, then the *old* library name, and then select each
> drive and do "Properties..." and in the "Status" area, check the box
> for "read only".
> 
> Once you've done that, your old drives will *not* be used for writing
> any new backups, but they can still be used for reading your old backups.
> 
> Label some tapes into the necessary media pool(s) in your new library and
> they should be used for all backups going forward.  If you do some
> GUI-based or scripted cloning, you could copy the savesets from your U3
> drives to the U5 or U6 drives and speed-up how long you need to keep
> around the older library.  You could potentially migrate everything to
> the new library and retire the old one in a very short amount of time.
> 
> Good luck with the new library!  Are you going with the encryption option?
> Contact me off-list once you have it; I'll be interested to know your
> thoughts on it.
> 
> Tim
> -- 
> Tim Mooney                                             Tim.Mooney AT ndsu DOT 
> edu
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