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Out of tapes 1

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esa2004

IS-IT--Management
Oct 17, 2007
4
NL
We are out of empty tapes atm..... problem is that some data is kept for 10 years and other for 1 month etc.

So now we have tapes with one job on the tape since the rest had aged. Anyone know how to move jobs to other tapes ?
 
Have a look at the tapetoolgui.exe..you can do tape copies with it but, not sure if you can copy to another tape that has valid data on.

If not then the only other way I can think of is to restore the data and back it up again.
 
I would suggest a aux copy of the SP
It might require you to bring back all your tapes to do it but it also might copy more jobs per tape during the aux.

I think (Birky can confirm :) ) that you can create a 2nd copy and tell it to copy all fulls begining from a specific date

If you have tapes that have 1 valid job and the rest have aged, you might be able to get away with just adjusting the Appendable media setting in the library properties to something like 180 days from last write. That might let your one month jobs age off and the system will write to the free space on the tape.... the only issue with this is fragmented tapes

 
Yes, you can do a 2nd Aux copy for all fulls from a certain date mate...you select 'Selective' within the Aux Copy set.
 
Ok, so i will make the picture complete to make sure we are on the same page:

Right now we have multiple storage policies, i will magnify on one as an example.

Storage Policy 1.
Primary Copy to fast disk, retain 7 days 1 cycle.
Synchronous Copy to slow tapelibrary site 1, retain 30 days 2 cycles, for 365 days total keep Montly Full, for 3650 days total keep yearly full.
Synchronous Copy to slow tapelibrary site 2, retain 30 days 2 cycles, for 365 days total keep Montly Full, for 3650 days total keep yearly full.


The problem as we have it is that all jobs are placed in on drivepool of tapes creating a problem after several months when first 30 days are aged but montly and yearly jobs stay on tape. Leaving some tapes in almost empty condition.


What you are sugesting for a solution:

Storage Policy 1.
Primary Copy to fast disk, retain 7 days 1 cycle.
Synchronous Copy to slow tapelibrary site 1, retain 30 days 2 cycles, for 365 days total keep Montly Full, for 3650 days total keep yearly full.
Synchronous Copy to slow tapelibrary site 2, retain 30 days 2 cycles, for 365 days total keep Montly Full, for 3650 days total keep yearly full.
Synchronous Copy to slow tapelibrary site 1, retain 0 day 0 cycle, for 365 days total keep Montly Full, for 3650 days total keep yearly full.
Synchronous Copy to slow tapelibrary site 2, retain 0 day 0 cycle, for 365 days total keep Montly Full, for 3650 days total keep yearly full.


Right ?
This action is going to result 2 tapedrives being used per library, one for reading one for writing. Or should i move these montly and yearly jobs to disk first ?
 
Your solution above looks ok but, personally I would take the monthly and yearly backups directly from disk...just specify another aux copy and schedule it (eg. last Sunday of the month), don't use the 'extended retention' rule option or else you will end up with tapes with a lot of free space on.
 
I just read this while browsing older posts.

Is your (Birky) suggestion here that extended rules aren't used in general for those monthlys and yearlys? How do you stop the tapes being used again - just manually assign them to a save set?
 
You just remove the auxiliary copy tapes from the tape library and then when another copy is scheduled it will use a new tape....unless you put the monthly/yearly tape back in and then the data will be added to the tape.



Birky
CommVault Certified Engineer
 
Seems very technical ;)

Naturally the 'take them out and put on a shelf' method is something I'm done with less sophisticated systems in the past. I was now of the mindset that I could (& should) be letting the system be totally responsible for retention and dictating what media to use.

So where do the extended rules really come into play? Just for magnetic media?
 
Extended retention rules are ok but, you can end up with tapes that don't have hardly any data on if your not careful.

It really depends on how big your full cycles are for that Storage Policy.





Birky
CommVault Certified Engineer
 
I use extended rules... but I also have only 1 SP for file system backups (other SP's for SQL and Exchg) I crank up the multiplexing on my FS backup SP and this avoids (For the most part) free space on the tapes.

Hope this helps

Thanks,

Frank
 
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