But if the bar code rule changes, how does NetBackup know that it is not a
new tape?
 
If you have 25 tapes sitting in offsite storage that NB read as ABC001-025,
you pull them back for a restore, NetBackup will not know anything about
them, assign them to scratch and you sit there wondering why the tapes don't
load.
 
Another scenario is that Quantum comes in and has to update the firmware on
a library and in the process has to remove all of the tapes to perform the
library calibration/verification (I have been through several of these).
All the tapes are put back into the robot (we know not all in the same
place).  How will NetBackup determine what is old, what is new, what is
borrowed, which admin is blue.
 
I have worked on this for over 6 months and have had a case opened/closed
with Veritas.  They concur with my dooms day scenario.
 
I have already had a similar thing happen on the install of a new library on
the same master that read 8 characters instead of 6 on the bar code label.
I caught it before tapes got overwritten.
 



Bobby Williams 
2205 Peterson Drive 
Chattanooga, Tennessee  37421 
423-296-8200 

 

  _____  

From: veritas-bu-bounces at mailman.eng.auburn.edu
[mailto:veritas-bu-bounces at mailman.eng.auburn.edu] On Behalf Of McCammont,
Anderson (IT)
Sent: Wednesday, April 25, 2007 11:30 PM
To: bobbyrjw at comcast.net; Martin, Jonathan (Contractor); Spearman, David;
veritas-bu at mailman.eng.auburn.edu
Subject: Re: [Veritas-bu] LTO-2 LTO-3 mix


No - changing the media id generation rule (MEDIA_ID_BARCODE_CHARS in
vm.conf) affects the media id.  Changing the barcode rules (potentially)
changes the media type and volume pool.  Existing tapes won't be reallocated
to a new pool on a barcode change - if they did then every inventory of the
library would break netbackup.  vmupdate(1M) only assigns attributes to new
media.
 
If we could put regexps into vmrule e.g.
 
(made up vmrule -listall -b)
barcode          media    volume         max mounts/
tag              type     pool             cleanings description
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
--
*CU$             HC2_CLN  None                    50 LTO Cleaning Tapes
CLN              DLT2_CLN None                    20 DLT Cleaning Tapes

*L4$             HCART4   Scratch                  0 LTO4 media
*L3$             HCART3   Scratch                  0 LTO3 media
*L2$             HCART2   Scratch                  0 LTO2 media
<NONE>           DEFAULT  None                     0 
<DEFAULT>        DEFAULT  Scratch                  0 ------


then the world would be a better place.  A trivial code change I'd bet and a
feature request that's been outstanding for several years.

 
  _____  

From: veritas-bu-bounces at mailman.eng.auburn.edu
[mailto:veritas-bu-bounces at mailman.eng.auburn.edu] On Behalf Of Bobby
Williams
Sent: 25 April 2007 18:21
To: McCammont, Anderson (IT); 'Martin, Jonathan (Contractor)'; 'Spearman,
David'; veritas-bu at mailman.eng.auburn.edu
Subject: Re: [Veritas-bu] LTO-2 LTO-3 mix


You can't change the bar code rules like that in mid stream.  It would
change the media id of every tape already in the library and put every
existing tape in scratch.
 
You are going to either have to partition the drives in separate partitions
(Yuk), or just pick your default tape type and add all of the other types
manually (not a big deal).  Existing tapes don't use the bar code rules
anyway, they are already known.  It is only NEW to the robot tapes that need
to have a bar code rule.
 
I have 2 i2K's with both LTO-3 and LTO-2.  No big deal.  I have them in the
same partition.  I use the LTO-3's mostly for tape to tape duplication for
offsite (LTO-2 duplicated to LTO-3 works great).  Most of the clients can't
push data fast enough to feed the LTO-3 tapes.  (Yes, I do multiplex some
mid range x3 to feed tapes data).  I use Staging disks to catch the really
slow ones and do disk to tape staging to the LTO-3 tapes.  If you put the
LTO-3's in their own partition, you could not use any tape duplication
between partitions.
 
Another major headache that I have at a site with 2 separate libraries (both
ADIC 1k's) is when one runs out of media, everything fails with 96 errors
and then moves to the other physical library.  Not a big issue until failure
stats are looked at.
 




Bobby Williams 
2205 Peterson Drive 
Chattanooga, Tennessee  37421 
423-296-8200 

 


  _____  

From: veritas-bu-bounces at mailman.eng.auburn.edu
[mailto:veritas-bu-bounces at mailman.eng.auburn.edu] On Behalf Of McCammont,
Anderson (IT)
Sent: Tuesday, April 24, 2007 10:24 PM
To: Martin, Jonathan (Contractor); Spearman, David;
veritas-bu at mailman.eng.auburn.edu
Subject: Re: [Veritas-bu] LTO-2 LTO-3 mix


If you do this you need to take part of your six digit barcode range and
dedicate it to the particular media type.  
 
It's sad that Netbackup doesn't support proper regexps in the barcode rules
so that the 'L2', 'L3' (presumably) 'L4' last two digits of the barcode can
be used to select the media type.  We've had a feature request in for years
for this and it's gone nowhere (unless 6.x does it and our rep hasn't
mentioned it).
 
<rant>  why's there no feedback on feature requests - even when they do make
it into a release you're left to scrabble round to see if it made it in
there.  </rant>

  _____  

From: veritas-bu-bounces at mailman.eng.auburn.edu
[mailto:veritas-bu-bounces at mailman.eng.auburn.edu] On Behalf Of Martin,
Jonathan (Contractor)
Sent: 25 April 2007 03:42
To: Spearman, David; veritas-bu at mailman.eng.auburn.edu
Subject: Re: [Veritas-bu] LTO-2 LTO-3 mix


Use barcode rules and media types.  LTO2 media can be hcart2 and LTO3 can be
hcart3 (I think hcart stands for Half-Inch Cartridge.)  NBU will never put a
hcart2 tape into an hcart3 tape device.  TO NBU that's as incompatible as
having LTO and DLT in the same library.
 
-Jonathan

  _____  

From: veritas-bu-bounces at mailman.eng.auburn.edu
[mailto:veritas-bu-bounces at mailman.eng.auburn.edu] On Behalf Of Spearman,
David
Sent: Tuesday, April 24, 2007 3:17 PM
To: veritas-bu at mailman.eng.auburn.edu
Subject: [Veritas-bu] LTO-2 LTO-3 mix


 

We will be getting an expansion cabinet to our scaler 2000 soon. At the
moment we have LTO-2 drives and tapes. When we add the expansion cabinet we
are also going to add 2 LTO-3 drives with a set of LTO-3 tapes. My question
is how do I keep LTO-2 tapes going to LTO-2 drives while the LTO-3 tapes go
only to LTO-3 drives. I suspect a combination of storage units and tape
pools but now that we are at NBU6mp4 expired tapes just return to the
scratch pool which would make them available to anything.
 
present setup
 
W2K3 master/media with sso/ndmp to scaler 2000 (5 tape drives allowed)
W2K3 media server sso to scaler 2000 and DSSU (4 tape drives allowed)
W2K3 san media server sso to scaler 2000 
 
David Spearman
County of Henrico
 
 

  _____  

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