Data Domain: Unable to restore from VTL tape selected for data movement

For systems where VTL tapes are vaulted in the Cloud Tier, it can take some time between a tape being selected for migration until it is moved to the Cloud Tier by the data movement process.  Whilst selected, the tape cannot be imported into a library if data needs to be restored from it.

A tape which has been selected for migration to the cloud cannot be imported into a library.  This is likely to be the case if the data-movement policy for a VTL is set to app-managed, and the cloud policy of the VTL is set to "age-threshold", meaning that the VTL marks tapes as selected for migration to the cloud tier when they reach a specified age.

Example of tape which has been selected for migration to the cloud, but which is required for a restore:

# vtl tape show pool vtlpool1 barcode E00123L3

Processing tapes....

Barcode    Pool       Location    State      Size             Used (%)   Comp   Modification Time

--------   --------   ---------   -----   -------   ------------------   ----   -------------------

E00123L3   vtlpool1   vault (S)   RW      300 GiB   300.0 GiB (99.98%)     9x   2019/11/30 07:19:41

--------   --------   ---------   -----   -------   ------------------   ----   -------------------

(S) Tape selected for migration to cloud. Selected tapes will move to cloud on the next data-movement run.

(R) Recall operation is in progress for the tape.


VTL Tape Summary

----------------

Total number of tapes:     1

Total pools:               1

Total size of tapes:       300 GiB

Total space used by tapes: 300.0 GiB

Average Compression:       9.1x


 Example of error message seen when trying to import this tape in order to restore from it:

# vtl import vtllib1 barcode E00123L3 pool vtlpool1 element cap

... imported 0 tape(s)...

 

 

**** Failed to import tape: Tape E00123L3 in pool vtlpool1 is selected for migration to cloud.

Tapes selected for migration to cloud cannot be imported to library.

In order to be able to import the tape into a library, the following steps should be carried out:

1) check the specific tape required for the restore is marked with (S) to show it is selected for migration to the cloud:

  vtl tape show pool <VTL pool name> barcode <tape barcode>

2) stop the data movement process if it is running:

data-movement status data-movement stop

3) reset the data-movement policy for the relevant VTL Pool:

data-movement policy reset app-managed mtrees <VTL's Mtree path>

4) check the data-movement policy for the relevant VTL Pool:

data-movement policy show all

5) check the cloud policy for the relevant VTL Pool:

vtl pool show all

6) Check whether the cloud policy is set to "age-threshold" (which will show the threshold in days) or "user-managed" for the relevant VTL.
If the policy is set to "age-threshold" then modify it to "user-managed":

vtl pool modify <VTL pool name> data-movement-policy user-managed to-tier cloud cloud-unit <cloud unit name>

7) Deselect the tape:

vtl tape deselect-for-move barcode <tape barcode>  pool <VTL pool name> to-tier cloud 

8) check the specific tape required for the restore is no longer marked with (S) (i.e. it is no longer  selected for migration to the cloud):

vtl tape show pool <VTL pool name> barcode <tape barcode>

9) import the tape into the library:

vtl import <VTL library name> barcode <tape barcode> pool <VTL pool name> element cap

If this is successful, then the tape can be used for the restore.

Consider whether the previous policies needs to be put back as they were.

Initial draft.