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GFS Rotation and Tape Cycling in Networker 7.5.1
Hello,
I am currently trying to implement a GFS Rotation with our tapes. I've setup for this purpose four groups with four pools to provide with daily, weekly, monthly and yearly backups. The rotation scheme should be as follows :
- Daily : backup on Monday to Thursday, retention : week
- Weekly : backup on Friday, retention : month
- Monthly : backup on 1st of month, retention : year
- Yearly : backup on 12/31, retention : decade
I would like to know if the following is possible and if so, how to achieve it :
- Daily pool : make sure that each day is written on a different tape (is it achievable without creating separate pools?)
- Weekly, Monthly, Yearly pools : we need to have the tape deposited into the service slots of our Tape Library, is there a command to do this?
Thanks for your help and best regards,
Max
masonb
445 Posts
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September 13th, 2010 06:00
Hi Max,
For new tapes to be used each day the only way to do this is to mark the tape volume as full so we do not append backups to the volumes. You could script this to automatically make the changes. You could identify the tape volumes with mminfo command using pool and full flag, then change the mode for each volume with nsrmm command to full. The exact syntax for each command is available in the Command Line Reference Guide for your version of NetWorker (available on Powerlink if you do not already have it in documentation section). I do not know how big your environment is (how many volumes you would use daily) - you can also achieve the above via the GUI - just looking for volumes in the pool which are appendable and marking as full there manually also if the number is small.
To withdraw volumes from the jukebox you can use the nsrjb command manually (or via script) or there is an option from the GUI also. If you are running from command line or script you need to ensure you cater for the number of slots which are available in the Cartridge Access Port (CAP) or mail slot for the jukebox so you fill available slots and then wait until the CAP has been emptied before continuing. Again you can identify the volumes via name from mminfo and then use nsrjb -w -T to withdraw (you can also use slot number to withdraw but cannot get this from mminfo command). This way NetWorker is aware of the volume changing location and does not cause issues or require library inventory.
Regards,
Bill Mason
max_mortillaro
16 Posts
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September 20th, 2010 05:00
Hello Bill,
Thanks for your answer. I decided not to opt for the "one day, one tape" method as it causes unnecessary overhead in the backup management process. I will need to test the commands you specified regarding the withdrawal of tapes from the jukebox.
Many thanks and Best Regards,
Max