Clone certian tapes - Duplicate tapes

Jihad,

The best place to find ths information is in the NetWorker Administrator Guide for 7.4.

Point your browser to powerlink.emc.com then navigate to Support > Technical Documentation and Advisories > Software ~ J-O ~ Documentation > NetWorker Family > NetWorker > 7.4 & Service Packs and look for the NetWorker 7.4 Service Pack 1 Multiplatform Version Administration Guide. In this guide Chapter 9 on page 209 discuaaes the cloning process for NetWorker.

Volume cloning - Page 209 from the Admin Guide

Volume cloning is the process of reproducing complete save sets from a storage volume to a clone volume. You can clone save set data from backup or archive volumes. Save sets can be automatically cloned as part of any of these operations, or manually cloned at another time.

The NetWorker server allows only one clone of a particular save set per volume. Therefore, if three clones of the same save set are specified, each clone is written to a separate volume.

Volume cloning is the process of reproducing complete save sets from a storage volume to a clone volume. You can clone save set data from backup or archive volumes. Save sets can be automatically cloned as part of any of these operations, or manually cloned at another time.

The NetWorker server allows only one clone of a particular save set per volume. Therefore, if three clones of the same save set are specified, each clone is written to a separate volume.

Volume cloning is the process of reproducing complete save sets from a storage volume to a clone volume. You can clone save set data from backup or archive volumes. Save sets can be automatically cloned as part of any of these operations, or manually cloned at another time.

The NetWorker server allows only one clone of a particular save set per volume. Therefore, if three clones of the same save set are specified, each clone is written to a separate volume.

How to create a clone volume

To create a clone volume:

1. From the Administration window, click Media.

2. In the expanded left pane, select Volumes.

3. In the right pane, select the volume to be cloned.

4. From the Media menu, select Clone.

5. From the Target Clone Media Pool list, select a clone pool.

6. Click OK and then click Yes on the confirmation screen.

There is also a process available for Saveset cloning, which is explained starting on page 210

I hope this provides you with the information you need.

Mark

Jihad

One thing you need to bear in mind is that Networker clones at the saveset level because tapes are not identical media so the data on tape A1 may not necessarily fit onto B1.  Having identical tapes is unecessary as long as you have an identical set of savesets.

As for the reason why your cloning failed we cannot comment on this until we see some error messages - it could relate to media, pools, devices etc...  If you can post some further info we can hopefully assist you...

Thank you guys for your help,

David,

I will explain what I need then you can provide me with suitable solution since I do not have good experinece with networker, please:

I have 6 tapes, and I need to clone them and send them to HQ, yet I need to send the clone tapes 2 tapes each time (we do not want to send them all at onece), and in case we lost them (these two tapes) I can reclone them and send them again without reclone the 6 tapes.

I hope you understand my idea.

So what is the best practice for this situation?

Many thanks guys.

Is this an ad hoc clone of 6 tapes or something happening on a regular basis?

The simplest way to do it if you are not confident is use the procedure Mark gave you above; bear in mind that cloning a volume is not making a copy of that volume but a clone of all savesets that begin on that volume (and will include the full saveset if it starts on that volume and goes onto other tapes).  Because of this you can't be certain that your 6 tapes are going to yield 6 cloned tapes.

You can also do this from the command line:

mminfo -q "volume=volume name[,any other parameters]" -r ssid,cloneid|grep -v ssid|awk '{ printf  $1"/"$2"\n" }'|while read -r ssclone; do nsrclone -b ClonePoolName -S $ssclone; sleep 10; done

- I'm assuming your backup server is running under UNIX...   You can change the first part of the script (mminfo command) to report what you are expecting to clone (for example all backups on a particular day).