Tapes ran without barcode, adding barcode after

[cffit]

I found that VEEAM B&R will use tapes even if they have no barcode. After a job has run to a tape without barcode, can you then add a barcode to the tape? And then if you do, should you catalog it? Is there another route that should be taken? I don't want to break the tie of the data on the tape to the job that was run.

[veremin]

Yes, you can. Next time the tape shows up in the library/drive, it will automatically be placed in the "Unrecognized" media pool. Once you perform inventory operation on it, the barcode field of the medium will be updated smoothly. Thanks.

[cffit]

Thanks. So should I wait until the next time the tapes are to be used and let VEEAM read the barcode then and use the tape? Or should I barcode them now and do an inventory on them even though they will not be re-used for a few weeks?

[veremin]

The inventory operation is required for VB&R to update the tape barcode properly. It's up to you when to run it: now or few weeks later. Thanks.

[cffit]

Here is what I did:

Backup weekend jobs ran to tapes without barcode. After they ran (full weekend backups), I exported them, added barcodes, then imported them and ran inventory. Things went great and the barcode was read. However, they said they were in an Unrecognized media pool. So I assigned them to the Weekend Media Pool that I have for the weekend backups. To do this it warned me that it would need to move them to the Free media pool first, then to the Weekend Media Pool. I said ok and it moved them to the Weekend Media Pool. However, it then showed the tapes as though they were empty. I re-ran the inventory job on both of the tapes and then they showed up with the correct amount of data and dates on them.

I thought everything was grand, but now today my first weekday job is running. These jobs go to the Weekday Media Pool. My jobs to tape are stuck and won't take the Weekday tape that I have in. I think this is because it wants to backup the weekend jobs again because it's looking for a tape in the Weekend Media Pool.

Did moving the tapes from the Unrecognized media pool to the Weekend media pool erase the tapes? If not, does VEEAM think these weekend files weren't backed up because of all this inventory and moving tapes to different media sets? What are my options now? Do I have to re-run the weekend backups again?

[cffit]

It looks like moving the tapes from the Unrecognized media pool to the Weekend media pool lost all the data on the tapes. When I look at the tapes under the Media - Offline area, it shows the tapes are full of data size-wise, but when I look at the files on them they are empty. So I guess I have to re-run the weekend backup again.

[veremin]

Backup weekend jobs ran to tapes without barcode. After they ran (full weekend backups), I exported them, added barcodes, then imported them and ran inventory. Things went great and the barcode was read. However, they said they were in an Unrecognized media pool.

The described situation doesn't look expected - once you inventoried tape mediums, they should have been assigned to their original media pool. The QA will try to reproduce this behavior. I will update the topic when I have more information.

Thanks.

[cffit]

Thank you for looking into it. I can verify that this was for sure the behavior I experienced.

[veremin]

QA team has just confirmed this bug. According to the plan, it should be fixed in the next product version. Thanks.