Been asked for Tape Reports usage reports 1

[Vela]

1st off our enviroment is large- 40 9940b drives, backups run 24-7,I've spread vaulting throught the week now because of pure load on the system-

I've been asked to report on how many tapes we use and when we're going to run out. This is a hard question-

When trying to figure out how many we will use and when we'll run out I've came up with this idea-

Vaulted media is the only media that will not return for 7 years so I can consider this media for now as "going away"

So also considering how many tapes are used per week by vault as a whole and minus that number out of the available status tapes in the available media report i can guage when we'll run out right ort come close to it?

I can't find any other reports that would help here.

I did the "media written" script for each months goign back as far as I could to get some metrics and it looks failry scary as the beginning of this year tape uasge has soared from 65 tapes a month to 800 a month now- This enviroment has grown but damn! That much!?

I could do media written everyday to see how many tapes have been written to each day but for reporting there's this! Just because their written to doesnt mean they are FULL. So does anybody have any ideas on how to report on tape usage besides what I've came up with?

My last job we did 24-7 backups but they didnt have to worry about tape usage reports because in their contract Storage Tek would supply a certain amount of palleted tapes to use so when the run shrt bam there's more but they will run out some day and have to make these reports as I'm doing as will all enviroments so we might as well get together and comeup with some ideas for tape reporting to upper management to satisfy the need to purchase 80k worth of tapes

Thanks for reading Ryan

 

[alimac1]

Netbackup is a great product but the thing it lacks the most is the reporting tools. At the moment I am trying to persuade my company to purchase some reporting software from a company called bocada, the only problem is that its fairly expensive if you have a lot of servers.
We have tried command line reports but the admin guys don't like them.

 

[Vela]

We've had a presentation done by a company in Texas called
APP-IQ
they have a software called "Apptare" and it kicks butt
It really expensive but picks up where Veritas drops and lacks.

We finally threw together a tape report for management after compiling alot of data.

We ended up making a bar chart, with the total number of tapes we have entered to the database as a line across the top. We then took the total of tapes offsite from the "availale media script" and the total tapes onsite and
entered them to the chart. We then added a third bar totaling these up. We then could show a trending line for abouts when we will run out of tapes.

This isn't the easiest as tapes expire daily and vault here eats up about 40 tapes a wekk to offsite.

I think management has allocated 300k for tapes next year so we should be ok. If not I'm taking a tirp to Mexico`!
ehehehe

 

[lenski]

Take a look at the reports/media summary. This will list the retention periods of your tapes. So rather than trying to work out how many you are using each day (which as you say can be misleading) look to see what is being recycled. That is how many tapes are being released each day/week/month. When you know how many tapes are released match that to the total tapes in the pools. Only you know what your retention periods are. But you should be able to see what the size of your scratch pool is and at what rate it is reducing. For example 10 tapes released last week 9 this you are going to be one tape short. So you need to buy one tape. Very simple example I know, but give it a go.

 

[Vela]

So instead of checking the retentions that way I can use
BPMEDIASUMMARY -L

This will display a list of all tapes expiring starting this week. If I grab the average tapes expiring per day or week then match that up to what? The scratch pool?

 

[lenski]

Well now comes the difficalt bit you need realy to monitor your system to work out what the floating tapes in each pool is. My system is fully populated so each tape pool has a stable amount of tapes. That is tapes are released at the same rate they are used so each day the nunber unallocated in each pool is roughly the same. To work out what I needed for the next year, I ignored the daily and weekly cycles as I knew that they were stable and apart from to odd tape or two would not need more. If the floating tapes had been reducing then I know I would have to increase the numbers by at least the same. The problem is the longer term retentions. 7 years makes it hard, but the important process is the same as for daily or weekly. Monitor the amount the pool reduce over a given time, month at lest. Of course you are not going to get tapes recycled for 7 years.

 

[Vela]

I did kinda average the number of tapes expiring daily and was thinkning that # would be able to help in determining
this as well

Also if I were to toal the amount of data written monthly, say 300TB then devide that number by the average amount of data compressed ona FULL tape which would be about 200GIG

So could this number be the amount of tape consumed or used to cpacity per month?

Thanks for the help!

Ryan

 

[lenski]

Yes but as always it's going to be a bit rough. So many things can effect what the capasity is.

 

[Vela]

Exactly, I've noticed some tapes go FULL at 200GIG then there are some that don't fill up til they have about 600GIG then there are some with 800GIG compressed.

So if i take the lowest at 200gig and devide by the total amount of data written per month I'd have at least something to go by. If anyting I'd have more tapes than I need or enough for growth which is always better than not enough tapes which is the problem right now.

Thanks Ryan

 

[lenski]

All ways better to have too many then too few. After all they are always going to be used.

 

[mikedaruke]

Why do some tapes fill up at 200gig and some at 800gig, what does netbackup use to determine and mark the tape as full? The size you see in the bpmedialist report in kb, I guess thats compressed, since tapes hold 80gigs no?

 

[Vela]

The 9940 tapes hold 200G compressed but the Storage Tek drives compress it even further depending on the type of data. If it's flat files it really compresses or if it's visio presentations it won't compress near as much.


Ryan

 

[Vela]

Let me clarify that we use 40 Storage Tek 9940B tape drives and Imation "blackwatch" 9940B tapes which hold 200GB uncompressed.

Typical data compression for this set-up is 2.4:1



Ryan