Tape Inventory

[yoni]

Hi all,

Just have a quick question regarding how Veeam handles tapes and tape inventory.

We configured a new instance of Veeam and the tape library, and loaded our first set of tapes.
After inventory all tapes appeared in the unknown media pool.
We created a Weekly and Monthly media pool, ran our jobs, and sent the tapes off site.

We then loaded a new set of tapes, never before used in Veeam but with data from a previous backup application.

After inventory the tapes were added to the Weekly and Monthly media pools apparently based on their Slot position. During the inventory Veeam reported that it did not recognize the tapes, so I'm not sure why it did not place them in the Unknown Pool? Since it placed them in the Weekly and Monthly Pools, the tapes already had retention settings applied to them even though these tapes had never been used or written to by Veeam. It seemed to think these were the same tapes from the previous week.

In this case, what is the best practice? Should we move the tapes to the Free pool manually? Or should we just mark them free or erase them? Or is our Veeam inventory not working properly?

Any advice would be appreciated.

[Shestakov]

Hi,

We then loaded a new set of tapes, never before used in Veeam but with data from a previous backup application.

Is that another Veeam B&R installation or another backup software?

Should we move the tapes to the Free pool manually? Or should we just mark them free or erase them?

It depends what you want to do with them. If you want those tapes to be used in the existing media sets, you can just leave them there. If you want to distribute the tapes among media sets automatically, move them to the Free Media Pool.
Thanks!

[yoni]

The problem is if we leave the tapes then the backup jobs will fail since the tapes have retention policy applied from the previous backup.

[veremin]

You should either quickly erase them or place them manually in Free Media Pool. Both of those actions will move tapes to free media pool and tape jobs will be able to use them afterwards.

However, the fact that tapes never used in VB&R were wrongly inventoried and placed in the existing media pools should be investigated closely. So, I recommend you to open a support ticket.

Thanks.