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Recycling media
Hi,
A quick question regarding the (auto-)recycling of 'expired' media.
We have a situation where recycling is enabled for a particular backup group
(as far as I can tell, all the correct boxes are ticked), and have a number of tapes
which are part of that group that are now 'expired' and we are looking to recycle them,
but for some non-obvious reason, aren't being automatically re-used.
Below is an example of a couple of the tapes involved -
state volume written (%) expires read mounts capacity volid next type flags
E 4026 GB full expired 0 KB 4 2620 GB 7755914 254 LTO Ultrium-6
E 2400 GB 92% expired 19 MB 4 2620 GB 2091676100 178 LTO Ultrium-6 r
When we mount one of these, 'nsrmm' reports it as 'write protected' (despite the physical tab being set for the opposite).
Unmounting, then using 'nsrmm -o' and setting various mode options manually seemingly hasn't helped.
Is there something else that needs to be done to enable this, or is is that maybe all the save sets are not
yet fully expired? (if yes, how can I better determine this??)
Thanks for any assistance!
Anonymous
5 Practitioner
5 Practitioner
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274.2K Posts
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February 15th, 2017 20:00
Herbivore,
Please check a few things as follows:
1. Validate that each and every saveset on the tape is expired (cE) .
2. To check above, run:
mminfo -avot -q volume=volumename -r ssid,cloneid,savetime,ssbrowse,clretent,fragflags,clflags,ssflags,level
Please replace the volume name by the true name of the volume in the command.
Validate that none of the ssids on this tape is incr and has a dependent FULL that has not yet expired.
Make sure the volumes are not set to read only versus recyclable.
Thanks
Jeewan
bingo.1
2.4K Posts
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February 15th, 2017 21:00
It could be a bug for the specific version but it could also be a kind of misunderstanding:
- NW sets the tape to 'read-only' which is pretty much the same as 'write-protected'.
- I recommend not to set the physical write-protection 'switch' on the cartride
- it is not necessary as long as the tape stays inside the jukebox.
- you will forget about it
- to the best of my knowledge no jukebox will detect it (just a drive can do that)
The most important fact is that NW will not relabel a tape when it has expired - it will only do it when he needs to re-use the tape (and Auto Media Managament AMM has been enabled).
Why? - because you might still need to recover. But this is impossible if the tape has been relabeled.
So NW will just ensure that he will not overwrite prematurely. If you want to change that, you must run a (scripted) job which ...
- detects expried tapes
- labels them to a fake SCRATCH pool
- sets these tape to 'expired'
Now NW can get an empty but expired tape whenever he needs one.
TheHerbivore
2 Posts
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February 16th, 2017 14:00
Thanks for the replies!
I ran the mminfo query against the tape in question (NW - Pastebin.com) -
seems like everything is marked as 'expired' (either {c,h,m,t}E, basically)
The next ~10 tapes after this one are set to 'expired' too, so I don't think
it should be worried about what is on the next tape or two, from what I can tell.
Does this look "normal"?
We are currently using our last labelled tape, so I'm wondering if this will
kind of force NW to then try and re-cycle this tape? Or, because 'write-protected'
is reported, will this not actually happen?
What else needs can be done (we aren't using a jukebox, btw)?
---
c = complete
h = head
m = middle
t = tail
wlee
263 Posts
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March 3rd, 2017 10:00
Regarding the information already supplied:
The "mminfo -mvV" output shows that both volumes are expired and eligible for recycling.
The mminfo output showing savesets for one volume does show that they are all expired and eligible fore recycling.
Auto Media Management (AMM) only applies to unlabeled tapes, and to non tape devices such as file AFTD and DDBOOST. AMM does not apply to tapes that have already been labeled.
When a tape is eligible for recycling, and the tape is not yet full, then NetWorker also marks the tape as Read-Only to prevent additional writing to volume until it is relabeled.
To test that expired tapes can be automatically recycled and relabeled, try the following:
1) select a pool for testing
2) make sure that the jukebox only contains expired tapes from that pool. i.e. no appendable tapes from that pool
3) Make sure there is no NetWorker operations using the jukebox, and reset and inventory the jukebox:
nsrjb -HEv # reset
nsrjb -IIv # quick inventory
nsrjb -v | find /i (pool) # list all the tapes that is part of the pool
4) perform a manual save using:
save -b (pool) -v "C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts"
What should happen is:
1) NetWorker will first look for appendable volume from that pool in the jukebox (there should be none)
2) NetWorker will then look for recyclable volume from that pool in the jukebox. It should find and select one, then:
- load it into one of the tape drives.
- verify label
- delete the volume from the media database
- relabel and mount the tape
3) backup data written to the tape
If this works... then this proves that NetWorker can automatically recycle tapes
Give it a try... and let us know the results. Good luck.