Tape backups during quarantine - no access to data center

[rdbastedo]

We send our tapes offsite every week on Thursdays.
Our organization decided to close the building to employees except for emergencies.
They do not consider tapes going offsite an emergency.
What's best practice for our tape backups?
Should I just keep track of which tapes would have gone offsite on which dates and then once we are allowed to access the data center figure out which sets go out and when they should come back?
What is everyone else doing?

[Dima P.]

Hello Rick,

From the top of my head you need to disable eject/exports to make sure that tapes remain in the library. These options are controlled by the tape jobs, so you can change it in the job properties.

Since you don't have an option to swap tapes, it's also required to make sure that tapes are overwritten (as otherwise you will simply run out of free space). In order to do that you can adjust retention in the media pool properties to 'Do not protect data (cyclically overwrite tapes as required)'. Cheers!

[Egor Yakovlev]

Hi Rick,
Looks like it is a good time to consider Cloud VTL options or side alternatives to tapes, like Object Storage! For the time of quarantine you can add and use a cloud VTL, where no physical tape handling will be required, and data will be kept offsite. Whenever your datacenter opens again, it's a matter of changing tape jobs to target local library media pools back!
/Cheers!

[rdbastedo]

Thank you!
We have enough space for 5 more weeks of writes, so I am hoping they allow us back in before then.
If not I will implement some change, fortunately I have some time on my side.
For now I am documenting the tape ID's that should have gone offsite this week, then I will add to that next week and so on.
Iron Mountain told me the best thing to do with their service is simply postpone delivery and pickup each week until we can get back to normal.