Tape expires in never

[SebSpi]

Hello guys,

I am fairly new to your veeam tool and as you can see this is my first post on here.
It seems like I am the only one with this problem or I haven't searched good enough for a possible answer.
We have a mediapool for our Archive full with eight tapes, while six out of eight tapes have a regular expiration date, two of them never seem to expire, even if you mark them as free, they change their status back to "never". Right now I am trying to figure out why the media pool behaves like that. It seems like this behaviour returns once in a week and every other backup to tape Job is pending in a query while the backup Job to tape for our archive waits for another tape, which does not happen, because the next tape that expires will be in May and of course we can't wait that long. So what am I supposed to do? Eight tapes would be enough if two of them weren't blocked like this.

Do you need more informations or screenshots?

Thanks in advance
Sebastian

[veremin]

Hi, Sebastian,

Can you tell me what media set creation and retention settings does the corresponding media pool have? Also, have you tried to erase given media and see whether it solves the issue? Aren't you exporting tapes to a media vault that has "protect all tapes" option enabled?

Thanks.

[SebSpi]

Hey,

okay here are some Infos
- Media Set: Automatically create new media set -> Do not create, always continue using current media set
- Retention: Data Retention policy -> Protect data for 5 months
- Retention: Offline media tracking -> disabled
- Options: All disabled
- Summary: Media pool name: Archiv 6 Monate
Media pool description: Created by CARO-HB\administrator at 22.07.2015 20:52:42.
Tapes count: 8
Capacity: 11,1 TB
Remaining: 1,4 TB

So far I haven't erased and re-added these tapes, but I might try if this seems to be a legit solution. The Option "protect" is disabled for 7 out of 8 tapes, only one tape which I marked as free seems to be protected.

I hope this helps a bit in solving this problem.

[veremin]

Given the specified settings, tapes should have 5 months expiration period, instead of endless one ("expire never"). It might be worth indeed erasing them and seeing whether it helps or not.

As to protection, you can protect only cassettes having data written to them. Protection option should be greyed out for free medias.

Thanks.

[TommyB]

Was this solved? If yes, how? I'm experiencing the same issue...

[SebSpi]

Well, I tried to erase the tape. With short erase I got several Errors that it would be unable to perform Tape erase from Library xxx and that it cannot lock tape drive. And the same error occurs with Long Erase. So I am right back at the start. Maybe one of the mods can help for further clues?

[veremin]

Something strange and unexpected seems to be happening in your environment. So, I'd recommend to open a ticket with our support team and post its number here, so that we can follow the case. Thanks.

[SebSpi]

Okay I've opened up a case. Here is the case number: #01819982. I will Keep you updated.

[veremin]

Let's wait and see what support engineer says after logs investigation. Thanks.

[hoFFy]

Did the support find anything?
I see this at some of our customers too. We use normally one media pool with a new media set created for every backup session and data isn't protected, overwritten every time. But from time to time one tape is randomly set to never expire until I mark it as free.
I'm wondering if nobody else has these problems?!

[veremin]

Based on the support ticket, the tapes were finally erased, using vendor utility (ITDT in that case). After that, VB&R was able to use that media successfully.

However, the root cause hasn't been identified. Therefore, it might stand to reason to open your own case.

Thanks.

[hoFFy]

Thank you Vladimir