Clem,
I'm moving from Legato to Netbackup.
In the Legato world, relabelling the VTL volume resulted in the space
being returned to the disk. This is true even for an expired tape. ie I
needed to relabel it.
In Netbackup, I think it is significantly better. This is because an
expired tape gets labelled and put into the Scratch pool automatically.
This way the number of volumes to be managed is reduced significantly.
With a wee bit of planning, I think it might be possible to eliminate
the need for relabelling. I'm toying with various options. One of them
is to do in-line copy for off-site. The primary copy with lesser
retention time will stay in the VTL. The off-site physical volume will
have the correct retention time.
Please let us know what you decide and how it is working out. It would
certainly help the community as a whole bunch of us are working on the
same issues.
Clem Kruger wrote:
> Hi Stuart,
>
>
>
> In my experience we had to as the “DISK SPACE” was still in use!
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> *Kind Regards,*
>
> *Clem Kruger*
>
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> *From:* Liddle, Stuart [mailto:liddles AT amgen DOT com]
> *Sent:* 22 September 2007 21:35 PM
> *To:* Clem Kruger; Curtis Preston; VERITAS-BU AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu
> *Subject:* RE: Re: [Veritas-bu] Script to label expired tapes in a VTL
>
>
>
> Clem,
>
>
>
> You have made a rather curious comment. You don’t have to delete the
> tape to get the space returned. (My experience is with the NetApp VTL.)
> There are settings on the VTL that you can set to allow for how long
> you keep a virtual tape in the “shadow” pool once it has been “cloned”
> to physical tape.
>
>
>
> If you are not cloning to physical tape and are just keeping images on
> virtual tape, then you would not be “deleting” the tapes, you would be
> expiring images…just like Curtis said about the DSU.
>
>
>
> That’s one of the nice features of the NetApp VTL. If you have the disk
> space, as long as you have cloned to physical tape it will keep the
> virtual tapes around until the VTL needs to free up space for newer
> backups. It does this for you automatically!
>
>
>
> --stuart
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> *From:* veritas-bu-bounces AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu
> [mailto:veritas-bu-bounces AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu] *On Behalf Of *Clem
> Kruger
> *Sent:* Saturday, September 22, 2007 2:33 AM
> *To:* Curtis Preston; VERITAS-BU AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu
> *Subject:* Re: [Veritas-bu] Script to label expired tapes in a VTL
>
>
>
> Hi Curtis,
>
>
>
> You have to delete the tape to get your space returned. This is the real
> pain and cost
>
>
>
> Clem.
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Curtis Preston [mailto:cpreston AT glasshouse DOT com]
> <mailto:%5bmailto:cpreston AT glasshouse DOT com%5d>
> Sent: 22 September 2007 11:15 AM
> To: Clem Kruger; VERITAS-BU AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu
> Subject: RE: [Veritas-bu] Script to label expired tapes in a VTL
>
>
>
> And you don't get the space back on a DSU until you expire the image.
>
> So what? I also argue that what Steve is asking for isn't necessary.
>
> (I think he's MAKING it necessary by oversubscribing, but that's not the
>
> VTL's fault.)
>
>
>
> Oversubscription aside, once his tapes are expired, the space taken up
>
> by those tapes is immediately available for reuse. The next time the
>
> tape gets written to, it will delete all pointers to the space taken up
>
> by that tape.
>
>
>
> As to the VTL vs disk debate, I still think you should bring in all disk
>
> devices and let them duke it out before excluding an entire category of
>
> them. You're going to exclude a lot of really good products if you just
>
> "no VTLs."
>
>
>
> Remember that saying "I don't want a VTL but I do want de-dupe" means
>
> that you're going to use NAS. While that will meet a whole lot of needs
>
> for a whole lot of people, there's also some really big backups that
>
> need a lot more than you can push over IP. For those backups, you're
>
> going to want a block transfer protocol (i.e. SCSI), and for that,
>
> you're currently going to be buying a VTL. (Unless you're just going to
>
> buy a non-deduped disk in which case I'd say you're REALLY wasting your
>
> money.)
>
>
>
> ---
>
> W. Curtis Preston
>
> Backup Blog @ www.backupcentral.com
>
> VP Data Protection, GlassHouse Technologies
>
> -----Original Message-----
>
> From: veritas-bu-bounces AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu
>
> [mailto:veritas-bu-bounces AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu] On Behalf Of Clem
>
> Kruger
>
> Sent: Saturday, September 22, 2007 4:24 AM
>
> To: VERITAS-BU AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu
>
> Subject: Re: [Veritas-bu] Script to label expired tapes in a VTL
>
>
>
> Hi Steve,
>
>
>
> This is the downer on VTL's. You do not get your "tape" space back
>
> automatically. It is for these reasons I recommend that one never go
>
> VTL's. NetBackup 6.0 and 6.5 allow disk to disk backups; the images are
>
> easily replicated to an offsite facility.
>
>
>
> The time for all "tape" has come and gone. The de-duplication facility
>
> in 6.5 makes life even easier. Why VTL's (which does SCSI emulation)
>
> when you and use disk which is faster and has more protection?
>
>
>
> Clem.
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
>
> From: veritas-bu-bounces AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu
>
> [mailto:veritas-bu-bounces AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu] On Behalf Of
> swaltner
>
> Sent: 21 September 2007 17:32 PM
>
> To: VERITAS-BU AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu
>
> Subject: [Veritas-bu] Script to label expired tapes in a VTL
>
>
>
>
>
> We deployed a VTL last month, which has been working very nicely. This
>
> is in a NetBackup 5.1 environment with the VTL attached to our Solaris
>
> based master server as well as to our NAS server for local NDMP backups.
>
> One thing I'd like to do is over-subscribe on the back-end storage, but
>
> before I do that I'd like to automate the process of freeing up the disk
>
> space used in the VTL when a NetBackup tape is expired. Just curious if
>
> anyone has already written such a beast and would like to share with me
>
> as a starting point.
>
>
>
> If not, I suspect I'll use the following logic:
>
>
>
> - Every day (at noon??), query the robots defined in the VTL and keep a
>
> record of tapes that are allocated.
>
> - When a tape goes from allocated to non-allocated from one day to the
>
> next, use a command like the following to erase the tape's contents:
>
> bplabel -erase -o -d dlt -m VTL123
>
>
>
> This would write a small label at the beginning of the virtual tape,
>
> causing the VTL to drop all the other data that had been stored on the
>
> tape.
>
>
>
> Any reason this wouldn't work? Any gotchas with writing this script that
>
> I should look out for?
>
>
>
> Steve
>
>
>
> +----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> |This was sent by steve.waltner AT lsi DOT com via Backup Central.
>
> |Forward SPAM to abuse AT backupcentral DOT com.
>
> +----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>
>
>
>
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>
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>
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>
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