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Physical Tape expiry not getting reused for backup - TS3500/LT05
Hello,
We are running clone operations to Physical Tape IBM on a weekly basis and which stays for retention period of 30 days. I could see some of the savesets have crossed the Retention period(For example 11/15/2021) but still they are not being reused for new backups and I am able to even list the savesets which were marked for expiry already. We have set the browse period and retention period both to 30 days.
Isn't it possible for the networker to do a automatic way of reusing the tapes once they are expired ? Since what I am doing now is, The save sets are expired i am just relabling or set tape as recyclable but it is not getting picked up for auto-reuse.
Please let me know where I need to be looking in ?
Networker : 19.4
bingo.1
2.4K Posts
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November 16th, 2021 02:00
NW only deletes obsolete/expired save sets from disk devices.
By default, NW touches a tape and relabels/reuses it only
- if the tape has expired AND
- if there is the need for a new backup media.
That's why you have an additional status (recyclable) which indicates such a situation. The reason for this behavior is that you achieve max. backup data security. However, NW by default would reuse an expired tape before it will even label a new/virgin one.
Some customers use scripts to recycle/relabel expired tapes manually (and potentially assign them to a 'scratch' pool), from where NW can pick a tape in case he needs it.
barry_beckers
393 Posts
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November 16th, 2021 06:00
I assume that relabel from and to other pools is also enabled (if that is something you'd want to have in place that is (when we still had a VTL solution with physical tape on its backend, we wanted to make sure that that feature was not used as we wanted to make sure a DB transaction log backup would never end up on the same tape as the full backup in case it would break, so we had dedicated VTL tape ranges for each specific pool use))), as well as auto library management?
Also you can have expired savesets that still would be required, for example if by accident you have incremental forever, due to no full backups being run for filesystem or MSSQL backup, due to which it will not release the old full backup if there are still incremental backups depending on it.
We've had once a MSSQL environment for which a first full backup was made but someone forgot to enable the schedule for it and since then for a prolonged time, only transaction log backups were run, so that first and only full was never recycled until actually a new full backup was made and normal recycling could take place.
perumj1
22 Posts
0
November 16th, 2021 19:00
"recycle/relabel expired tapes manually (and potentially assign them to a 'scratch' pool), from where NW can pick a tape in case he needs it."
Is there anyone in this group who have a sample script to achieve this ?