Filter double tapes after hardware fault of tape library

[HansMeiser]

Hello,

recently we had a hardware fault in our tape-library. problem was fixed and tapelibrary is online again. at first connect to veeam all tapes which were stored in the library at this point in time were doubled. the people did a rescan of library etc. and this problem is fixed in veeam GUI, no problem here. I can see 1 tapelibrary and only single tape numbers in stock like expected.

Requesting tapes with VBRTapeMedium looks different. All tapes which are now outside the library in a physical saferoom are doubled in result list. tapes which are located in the library show off only once.
The problem is that i cant differentiate between the doubled tapes. One must be the real tape and the other only a copy. identical is Name, Barcode and even LibraryId. The LibraryId of tapes which are removed from Library is "00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000". This is the same id the doubled tapes have. How can i make a difference between the tapes and filter out the double ones like Veeam GUI does? I tried most of Properties of VBRTapeMedium but nothing helps.

Thank you,
Hans

[david.domask]

Hi Hans,

Quick question, after resolving the hardware fault, did you re-add the Tape Server to Veeam or you only rescanned the existing tape server? Was any hardware replaced when resolving the hardware fault?

The duplicates aren't really expected here, and I think it would be best if you opened a Support Case and allowed Veeam Support a chance to review the situation. If it's allowed by your company's export policies, please include a backup of the Configuration Database so Support can better assist.

Please share your case number once created. Thanks!

[HansMeiser]

Hello,

thanks for your answer. it turned out it is less a powershell problem then a veeam tape management problem. May be someone can move this topic accordingly.

I wasn't there when it happened. I was told that they changed the mainboard of tape library and turned it on again. At this time veeam was showing 2 tape libraries. one was identified as the actual library and the other library with offline status was deleted. So on veeam side all fixed and veeam is working again with repaired library. It seems at the time we had 2 libraries in veeam the current inserted tapes are doubled.
I took a closer look and we have 66 Tapes in Mediapool "Unrecognized". This tapes have same names etc. as other tapes, but they are all offline and empty.

In powershell i found a way to exclude tapes from mediapool "Unrecocnized", so our output is fixed again. Now we are looking for a way to remove this doubled tapes from veeam without harming the actual tapes. Should i use " Remove from catalog" with these tapes?
Or is there an other recommend way?

Thank you,
Hans

[david.domask]

Hi HansMeiser,

I've moved the topic to the Tape forum, glad that some progress is being made.

If you're able to successfully identify the "fake" tapes, then yes pass them to Remove-VBRTapeMedium and the duplicates should be removed.

I strongly recommend run a manual Configuration Backup before hand "just in case" you need to roll back. Though even if an actual tape gets removed, you can re-import the data on tape by cataloging the tape.

Likely the hardware change resulted in a change in the tape hardware serial -- this is one of the items we track tape devices on and it's likely that Veeam saw the library as "new" because of the change in serial.