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Scanner command and Change of retention
Hi All,
I need your help/opinion. I have 300+ tapes and It has first full backup of data of our configured clients. But now these tapes are expired. As per the customer's demand we have to set all clients servers first full backup's retention to infinity. Now I have to retrieve the data of these clients and change their retention to the infinity. after that i have to clone this data to physical tape and send to offsite. Is there any chances that if we run multiple scanner at same time because multiple changes in index at same time may create havoc however, I never tired it.
I have made a plan to perform this activity in below manner.
1. Full backup of current indexes and bootstrap for any disaster.
2. Mark all expired tapes as Read-Only mode.
3. Run Scanner on them 1 by 1 or multiple session ( Let me know if anyone of you or your friend tried it before a multiple scanner operations)
4. Check consistency of the index
5. Select the oldest full saveset and change its retention to infinity.
6. Clone it to the physical tapes and send them off site.
Networker version: 7.6 on windows.
Clients version: 7.6
VTL: DataDomians
Total number of clients: 600-650 max.
Mostly Windows servers.
Any help and improvisation would be great help
wlee
263 Posts
1
October 2nd, 2010 07:00
Definitely make sure that the tapes have the write protect tab on, and also set the tapes as read only, and manual recycle. These steps should help to ensure that the tapes are not relabeled.
Are these 300+ tapes still recorded in the media database? They may be in Expired state, but NetWorker may still have catalog information for them; i.e. NetWorker may still know what is on those tapes. To verify this, either look at your volume list in NMC, or run:
mminfo -mvV | sort
If they are not listed in the media database, then yes you will need re-catalogue them back into the media database. This can be done using: "scanner -mv". Since you are only updating the media database, you should be able to run multiple scanner jobs. The savesets do not have to be browsable in order for them to be cloned, so you need not use "scanner -i".
If you simply want to change the retention time to infinity, then it is a simple matter of getting a list of all the saveset id's on the volumes, then use nsrmm to:
change the status of the saveset from expired to recoverable
change the retention time to the new future date.
If the 300+ tapes are still listed in the media database, and you need to clone them, then first modify the clone pool's retention to the new retention date; this will result in any savesets being cloned to that pool will be set with that retention date. Then start cloning.
Note that there is a big difference between saveset cloning vs volume cloning. With saveset cloning, you are copying the saveset to a new volume, regardless of where or how many tapes the original saveset occupied. With volume cloning, NetWorker will only clone the savesets that are COMPLETED on that volume. If there are partial savesets on that volume, then it will not be cloned during volume cloning.
So to ensure you clone all the savesets on those tapes, then you should use saveset cloning.
NetWorker 7.6.1 has a new feature where it can allow you to set up scheduled cloning. Take a look at this to see if it can help you.
Final note: I suspect that cloning 300+ tapes will take a very long time.
red_ice
2 Posts
0
October 2nd, 2010 10:00
Thanks lee,
we have 356 tapes marked as expired but read only mode. I think scanning or searching a specific ssid would be better. But i will check it on monday about the oldest ssid of a client. by running mminfo -avot -c -t "8 months ago". Then create a nsrclone for specific saveset than doing a volume clone. coz tapes costing is an important point.
regards
kk
ble1
14.3K Posts
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October 21st, 2010 07:00
What would be the explanation for such madness?
netflex
12 Posts
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July 13th, 2015 01:00
Lee... the question AND answer is similar to my issue. My client wants me to restore data from 2013, so have the end year tapes more than 50 tapes... how do read this tapes in multple. Aslo, how would i know the tapes that has the data i want. since there no more in the medi index.
ble1
14.3K Posts
0
July 13th, 2015 05:00
You might wish to open a separate thread... and most likely you may wish to explain what does it mean no media index (that would assume mminfo doesn't know about these tapes at all).