FYI - We are running NB 5.0 MP3 and running Vaulting. When we brought tapes back onsite to test SQL DB restores (as we have nothing else to do ever), we found that Vaulting would remove the tape even if the restore was running during the scheduled Vault run. We also found that NB would append data to the tapes, which makes sense. We changed the status of the tapes to 'suspended' and that eliminated NB trying to append data but Vaulting still tried to send the tape offsite. As of two weeks ago, our largest SQL database took about 14 hours to restore. Luckily, I had started the restore 18 hours prior to the next Vaulting run or the restore probably would have blown up. Experience has shown that once the SQL restore can't find a tape, the NB jobs just sit in the Admin console and stay green. What a life! Doing nothing but appearing to be doing something!
Update! I just checked the 5.0 NetBackup_AdminGuideI_WinServer.pdf version (I despise PDF files for known and unknown reasons. Here is one reason why I hate them: I wanted to copy the text description in the manual to eliminate a typing or other human error. So, I just spent 10 minutes saving the PDF to a Txt file then opening the Txt file in Word and saving it as a Word doc. I then searched the Word doc for 'frozen'. It found on instance of the word 'frozen' and of course that wasn't the description of 'frozen'. I also searched the Txt file for upper and lower case 'frozen' and got more hits but still not the description. I know life is rougher for others but crap!! I am just trying to copy the text verbatim. No even sure if verbatim applies to copying and speaking or just speaking. Technology! Blah!) Here is the description from the manual and yes, I should have just typed the damn thing in the first place: (I am not responsible for errors or misinterpretation of the following) Frozen: The volume is unavailable for future backups. A frozen volume never expires, even after the retention period ends for all backups on the media. This means that the media ID is never deleted from the NetBackup media catalog and remains assigned to NetBackup. (The BPMEDIA command can also be used to manually freeze or unfreeze (thaw?) volumes. I added the (thaw?) to the previous paragraph. So for next restore test, I will freeze the volumes and see if Vaulting still tries to move the tapes offsite again. Rick Morris International Game Technology - SAP Basis Administrator 775-448-7293 -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, June 02, 2006 01:04 AM To: veritas-bu@mailman.eng.auburn.edu Subject: Re: [Veritas-bu] FROZEN vs SUSPENDED We SUSPEND all tapes as they are ejected from the robot after the overnight backups. That way, if we have to bring them back on site for a restore, NetBackup will not try to append further backups to them. We had many cases where a tape was put back into the robot for a restore (physically write-locked); NetBackup selected it for backup that night if it was still in the robot (in fact, seemed to favour those older tapes). NetBackup did not like trying to write to a write-locked tape. As they were NDMP drives it did not even seem to get a sensible status back to say the medium was write-locked, so DOWN'd the drive. Then it tries to load the same tape in another drive, DOWNs that drive. When it has DOWN'd all the drives, the backups all fail. By SUSPENDing the tapes, we no longer see this problem. When all the images have expired, the tape ceases to be SUSPENDed and can be reused with no special action. FROZEN we will only use for e.g. tapes subject to litigation - we would also change the retention to 'infinite' so the images don't expire and so don't have to be imported. FROZEN happens mostly because NetBackup decides it does not like the media - it can easily set all the tapes in a robot to FROZEN if there is a problem drive. So mostly we look for FROZEN tapes, try and figure out how it happened, and unfreeze them. William D L Brown "Kelana Putra Setia" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent by: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 01-Jun-2006 13:58 To veritas-bu@mailman.eng.auburn.edu cc Subject [Veritas-bu] FROZEN vs SUSPENDED Hi All, Any opinions to the differences of a tape in FROZEN or SUSPENDED state? Thanks in advance .... Cheers, Kevin Setia __________________________________ Yahoo! Movies - Search movie info and celeb profiles and photos. http://sg.movies.yahoo.com/ _______________________________________________ Veritas-bu maillist - Veritas-bu@mailman.eng.auburn.edu http://mailman.eng.auburn.edu/mailman/listinfo/veritas-bu _______________________________________________ Veritas-bu maillist - Veritas-bu@mailman.eng.auburn.edu http://mailman.eng.auburn.edu/mailman/listinfo/veritas-bu