GFS Tape Job - Doesn't Eject Tape - Case 04824400

[johmar]

I have a GFS tape job with daily, weekly, monthly and quarterly in the GFS Media Set using a GFS Media Pool backing up to a tape drive that just holds a single tape. My dailies run fine. The tape job runs, backs up to tape, tape ejects and the job stops. When I come in the next morning I can quickly and easily swap tapes. The weeklies, monthlies and quarterlies do not do this. The job runs and backs up to tape. And then it sits there in a 'waiting' status saying the wrong tape is in the drive and it tells me what tape it needs, but the tape is still in the drive. To change tapes, I need to stop the job and eject the tape, change tapes and either wait for the scheduled time for the job to start again, or manually start the job again. I manually start it to make sure I'm up to date on the tape backups. The job will just stop if all is caught up.

My question is; why won't the tape eject for weekly/monthly/quarterly GFS backups? It also won't eject the tape is you just happen to put the wrong tape in. You have to stop the job, etc, etc. Every other backup software I've used for tape will spit the tape out if you have the wrong one in the drive. This issue seemed to pop up after my upgrade to V11.

The 'final answer' by support was that after a long discussion with the developers, this is working as designed and only full tapes are ejected despite the fact that the 'Eject tape media upon job completion' is checked on the job. Support was also surprised by the way this worked and said they would put in a feature request for this.

While this is not the end of the world, I would prefer that the tape be out of the drive so if we get hacked, my last backup tape isn't still in the drive and subject to erasure. In my opinion, this it is a hassle, and potential data loss danger, that we shouldn't have to have.

Has anyone else seen this behavior? Support said I was the first to report this and based on support's final answer, it would appear to be the way it should work for everyone on V11 using GFS for tape. If others are having this issue, I'd like to hear about it and if you found a way to make it eject automagically.

[Dima P.]

Hello John,

And then it sits there in a 'waiting' status saying the wrong tape is in the drive and it tells me what tape it needs, but the tape is still in the drive. To change tapes, I need to stop the job and eject the tape, change tapes and either wait for the scheduled time for the job to start again, or manually start the job again. I manually start it to make sure I'm up to date on the tape backups. The job will just stop if all is caught up.

Can you clarify what type of device you are using: standalone drive or tape library?

why won't the tape eject for weekly/monthly/quarterly GFS backups?

Should be performed: Eject operation is performed at the end of the job and wrong tape for GFS job might be the right one for another tape job pointed to the other media pool.

The 'final answer' by support was that after a long discussion with the developers, this is working as designed and only full tapes are ejected despite the fact that the 'Eject tape media upon job completion' is checked on the job. Support was also surprised by the way this worked and said they would put in a feature request for this.

Thanks for sharing the case ID we will review it with the team and I'll get back to you.

[johmar]

It is a stand-alone drive.

I only have the one media pool. I (and support) thought that it should eject the tape if it is not a valid tape for the job and time period it should be running (weekly tape in when it should be a monthly, for example). The odd thing is that the dailies tapes eject just fine but weekly/monthly/etc don’t.