> Paul
> Ok, thats fine relying on the catalog (the application catalog?), but
> probably not alot of help if the catalog is unavailable - assume this is=
>  the
> case as I see the catalog as a single point of failure from a security /
> audit perspective.

That's the entire job of the catalog.  Backups of the catalog and care
of it should keep it safe and secure.  

If you're worried about what to do if you lost your catalog, now is the
time to find out, not when it actually happens.  

All of my procedures and tasks assume the catalog is available or that
I'm working an issue to reconstruct it from tapes or other copies.

> again, from security and audit, we do label the tapes Month number + the
> month volume pool it comes from. This is essential, because I dont want to
> be in the same boat as the other site, where they have thousands of tapes,
> and do not seem to know what tapes belong to what backup client.

Depending on the size, that amount of information just doesn't seem to
be sufficient.  I would think I'd have hundreds of tapes in any given
month/pool combination.  If I need to match a tape to a particular
client, I run a quick script that queries the catalog.

> I do not wish to accomplish anything.... I was looking at a way of
> trying to make their life easier to load tapes back into the library
> when a restore from a certain tape is needed.

I just don't think you'd be able to put enough information on the label
(and keep them organized around it) to predict exactly which tape you'd
need beforehand unless you used lots of different pools.  And keeping
track of that many pools can be a different problem.

> If we are saying that the use of Activity Monitor is better than sitting
> down and labelling tapes, thats fine :-) I just wanted to be sure nothing
> simple was being overlooked.

In most cases, I think that's the best thing to do.  You can also hit
the preview button before the restore begins.  

> BTW, dont expect the catalog to be unavailable, but I would not rely
> on that one source (especially if it was lost and unrecoverable!). I
> dont want to be looking at a vault of 1000+ tapes to be imported !!

I think that's exactly why I do expect the catalog to be available.
Importing that many tapes would be horrendous so I'm going to take care
to keep it available.  Where is your backup copy of the catalog?  Where
else is it?  How is that location recorded (for you and for others)?
Have you ever tested a catalog recovery so that you know what to expect?

-- 
Darren Dunham                                           ddunham at taos.com
Senior Technical Consultant         TAOS            http://www.taos.com/
Got some Dr Pepper?                           San Francisco, CA bay area
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