Newbie to NetBackup - how to unfreze/expire media
Updated: 21 May 2010 | 5 comments
This issue has been solved. See solution.
Hi everyone,
I've just started a position where I am responsible for monitoring a NetBackup environment. Trying to slog my way through the admin guides, but I thought this may be a better solution.
How do I unfreeze media that is currently in the robot, and as an addendum, how do I actually set media to expire so it does not become frozen.
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If you have froxen tapes you
If you have froxen tapes you likley have another issue you need to address.
To freeze/unfreeze you can as of 6.x do it fromt he GUI or from the CLI you can use the bpmedia cmd
bpmedia:
-freeze|-unfreeze|-suspend|-unsuspend -m <media_id>
As for Expireing tapes the 6.x version removed the ability to simply expire a whole tape. There are alot of ways to expire a tape now nothing direct, i have found the easiest way for me is to to expire the images on a certain tape and NBU will kick the tape back to scratch.
Best of Luck,
Doug
"I named my hard drive That Thang, so once a month my computer asks me if I want to Back That Thang Up"
Expiring a tape
Expiring all the images on an entire tape remains the same in version 6.x
bpexpdate -m <volume> -d 0
What changed is that directly de-assigning a volume is no longer available. But I don't think that's what the OP was asking. Volume expiration is different from image expiration.
Change volume expiration date
/usr/openv/volmgr/bin/vmchange [-h EMM_server | volume_database_host]
-exp date -m media_id
--
Darren
Another way to unfreeze tapes
Another way to unfreeze tapes is from the Admin Console. Go to media setion, sort by "Media Status", highlight the frozen ones, right-click, Unfreeze. I would agree with the frozen tapes being a symptom of another problem. We have had them along with virtual tape library issues.
How to troubleshoot frozen media on UNIX and Windows
Unfreezing frozen media:
To unfreeze frozen media, use the bpmedia command with the following syntax:
For UNIX
/usr/openv/netbackup/bin/admincmd/bpmedia -unfreeze -m <mediaID> -h <name of media server that froze media>
For Windows
<Install_path>\VERITAS\Netbackup\bin\admincmd\bpmedia -unfreeze -m <mediaID> -h <name of media server that froze media>
If it is not known which media server froze the media, run the bpmedialist command and note the "Server Host:" listed in the output:
For UNIX
/usr/openv/netbackup/bin/admincmd/bpmedialist -m <mediaID>
For Windows
<Install_path>\VERITAS\Netbackup\bin\admincmd\bpmedialist -m <mediaID>
See the text illustration below for a sample output. In this example, bpmedialist is run for the frozen media div008. It is found in this example that the media server "denton" froze this media.
C:\Program Files\VERITAS\NetBackup\bin\admincmd>bpmedialist -m div008
Server Host = denton
ID rl images allocated last updated density kbytes restores
vimages expiration last read <------- STATUS ------->
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
DIV008 1 1 04/22/2005 10:12 04/22/2005 10:12 hcart 35 5
1 05/06/2005 10:12 04/22/2005 10:25 FROZEN
Ref: http://seer.entsupport.symantec.com/docs/249632.htm
Regards,
Taqadus Rehman
you asked - , how do I
you asked - , how do I actually set media to expire so it does not become frozen.
The expiration of a tape has nothing to do with it becoming frozen.
A tape can become frozen if it is write protected, in the library, and netbackup tries to write to it. This happens sometimes when doing restores and the tape is still in when the nightly backups start.
It can also become frozen if it had issues mounting or writing to the tape, so you have to watch for what caused the tape to become frozen, look at All Log Entries in the gui reports.
When all the images on a tape expire the tape is then avail as a scratch tape. Remember that if you leave the tape in the library for more then one day then the second nights backup can append to it so now you have 2 days on the tape, and it will not become scratch until the images from the second day expires. and so on and so on. Until the tape is full - then it will not write to it anymore, but you have to wait for all the images on the tape to expire before netbackup will write to it again.
Please remember that you can also expire a tape - this is not the same thing as expiring the images on the tape. If you are really fussy you can set the number of mounts you want to allow the tape, or set an expiration date on the tape. This just means that when it reaches that point netbackup will no longer use it for backups. Very few people use this, as there may not be anything wrong with the tape.
I don't have to know how to spell....I work on Unix.
NetBackup 7.0.1 - AIX & Windows
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