Media Refresh

Getting Started

Advanced

FAQ

Media Refresh operation enables you to consolidate data on media and/or to replace existing old media.

Prerequisites

Media Refresh requires the following:

Library and Drivers are configured.
Storage Policies are configured.
Regular client backups are scheduled.

Enabling Media Refresh

This section provides an example for running a Media Refresh operation based on the following criteria:

Retention period for all backups that you want to retain is set to 90 days (3 months)
Also, the number of full backup cycle is set to 0 in the retention criteria
Media refresh jobs are configured to run as follows:
1 month after the media is written

1 month before the media is aged

Active Media is Full

Use the following steps to configure the Media Refresh job using the above mentioned criteria:

1.	From the CommCell Console, navigate to Policies \| Storage Policies \| <Storage_Policy>. Right-click the Primary copy and then click Properties.
2.	Click the Media tab. Select Enable Media Refresh check box. By default, the Media gets refreshed with the below two criteria: Months after the media were written - Media that were not written to in the specified number of months will be picked up for refresh. Type or select 1 month from the list. Months before the media is aged - Media with specified number of months or more before aging will be picked up for refresh. Type or select 1 month from the list.
3.	Click the Retention tab. From the Basic Retention Rule for All Backups, select Retain for option and set 90 Days and 0 Cycles. Click OK.
4.	Once you perform the backup, specific media will be assigned to the storage policy. Note down the Barcode of the Media by performing the following steps: From the CommCell Browser, navigate to Storage Resources \| Libraries. \| <Tape Library> \| Media By Location \| Media In Library. In the Media In Library window displayed in the right-pane, you can see a Storage Policy / Copy associated to a particular media.

View a List of Media that Can Be Refreshed

Once the media is full and criteria's specified in the step 2 are satisfied, the media will be automatically picked for refresh. Use the following steps to see the list of medias that are picked for refresh operation.

Right-click the Primary copy, point to View and then click Media for Refresh.
In the Media for Refresh dialog box, the list of Media's required for Media Refresh operation are displayed.
Click Close.

Run The Media Refresh Job

From the CommCell Browser, navigate to Policies | Storage Policies.

Select and right-click the <Storage_Policy> on which the Media Refresh was enabled, point to All Tasks and then click Run Media Refresh.

Click OK.

The data stream structure set at the Storage Policy is preserved during media refresh; streams are not combined during a media refresh job.

You can track the progress of the media refresh job from the Job Controller window. Ensure that the job completes successfully.

Once you run the Media Refresh job, run the data aging job to release the media.

See Data Aging for step-by-step instructions.

Verify The New Media

From the CommCell Browser, navigate to Storage Resources | Libraries. | <Tape Library> | Media By Location | Media In Library.
In the Media In Library window displayed in the right-pane, you can see a Storage Policy / Copy associated to a New media.