More detailed info on tape usage / age

[TommyB]

Hi,

please correct me if I'm wrong, but currently there seems to be only very basic information about tapes.

When I look at the tape properties, there is only Barcode, Library, Location, Media pool and capacity information.

Much more important information for a tape I would like to see is:

- Tape age (when was it used first, when the last time)
- Total (K/M/G/T)bytes written / read

I would like to have this information to be able to replace older tapes.

Is there any way to get this information in Veaam B&R?

Thomas

[Dima P.]

Hello Thomas,

You are correct - this information is not displayed in the UI. To clarify, do you want to replace the media prior its expiration based on this information? VBR automatically determines tape media being expired and place it to the corresponding ‘Expired’ media pool.

[TommyB]

VBR automatically determines tape media being expired and place it to the corresponding ‘Expired’ media pool.

Ok, so the usage is stored somewhere internally and Veeam moves the tape out of the media pool and notifies me?

But what is the threshold? And is it possible to see which tapes are near "end of life", so I can get new tapes?

Normally I take a set of tapes each year as an archive so it would be good to be able to not remove brand new tapes from the media pool.

Thomas

[Didi7]

Unfortunately, the media pool 'Free' and the media pool 'Expired' only appears, when there is media available and you cannot expire media to a Retired media pool as well. I would be happy to have additional tape media Information as well.

Regards,
Didi7

[Dima P.]

But what is the threshold?

As far as I know, this info is stored inside the tape chip – we just request this information prior running the tape job.

[TommyB]

As far as I know, this info is stored inside the tape chip – we just request this information prior running the tape job.

Hmm... so who decides when to expire the media, the manufacturer of the media?

There are many factors that influence tape life time - such as temperature and humidity of the tape storage, just to name two, I think it would be better to give the Veeam user the control over this, there might even be some company rules when to expire the tape.

And I would rather like to say "retire", because expire is already used inside Veeam in a different context.

Because to be very precise, the retention setting of the media pool does not control the physical media expiration but the expiration of the backups stored on the media

Thomas

[veremin]

Hmm... so who decides when to expire the media, the manufacturer of the media?

Correct. The mentioned factors are controlled and monitored by device vendor and vary from one manufacturer to the other.

So, the current approach we have looks more or less logical to me - let device manage tape durability, and stop working with those cassettes that have been marked as retired by a library or a drive. Such medias are moved to the "Retired" Media Pool and existing jobs won't use them any longer.

Thanks.