VaultTracker^® Feature

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Overview

• Managing Media

How to use the VaultTracker Feature

Exporting Media using the VaultTracker Feature

• Exporting Media using the Export Media Wizard
• Exporting Media from a List
• Exporting Media using Tracking Policies

Removing Media from the Library

Recording Pending Actions

• Acknowledging Pending Actions

Viewing Tracking History

• Rolling back an action
• Deleting an action
• Pruning Tracking History

License Requirements

Related Reports

Overview

The VaultTracker^® feature license provides the capability to track media movement between two locations. It is also used to export media. The following sections describe the features and capabilities specific to the VaultTracker feature.

The VaultTracker Enterprise Feature license provides the capability to track media movement between several locations. In addition to the standard VaultTracker features, it also provides several advanced capabilities. For information on the features and capabilities specific to VaultTracker, see VaultTracker Enterprise Feature.

For information on license requirements, see VaultTracker^® Licenses in License Administration.

Managing Media

The VaultTracker^® feature provides the facility to manage media that are removed from a library and stored in offsite locations. In practical terms, the VaultTracker function provides the following capabilities in your day-to-day operations:

• Identifies media that must be sent off-site for storage or brought back from off site locations.
• Automatically moves the media in sequence in the library and provides a pick-up list for the operators.
• Facility to identify and track media during transit.
• Facility to record and track the movement of media not used by all MediaAgents or Foreign Media.

The following diagram provides an overview of the VaultTracker elements:

How to Use The VaultTracker^® Feature

The following section describes the possible steps involved in tracking media using the VaultTracker capabilities:

1. Initiate the VaultTracker process by exporting the media using the VaultTracker feature.
   • For media that should be exported immediately, you can export the media from a list of available media with VaultTracker features enabled.
   • For media that should be exported once certain criteria are met, you can define one or more Tracking Policies. A standard Tracking Policy can track the movement of media between any source and destination.
2. Once the Export Media operation has been initiated, you can remove the media from the library by ejecting the media from the library's mail-slot. The media can then be easily removed by opening the library door.
3. While the media is in transit, you can track and acknowledge the status of the media using Pending Actions.
   • Use Manual Acknowledgement to track the media manually in the CommCell^® Browser.
   • Use Automatic Acknowledgement to automatically acknowledge all pending actions associated with the media as long as the source and destination are locations.
4. View information about the media managed by the VaultTracker feature by generating a Tracking Report, which can include pending actions and media associated with a VaultTracker Policy.

The following sections describe each of these possible steps in depth.

Exporting Media using The VaultTracker^® Feature

You can export media using the VaultTracker Feature software and VaultTracker Enterprise Feature in the following ways:

• using the Export Media Wizard
• using the Export Media from a List feature
• using VaultTracker Policies
• after Data Protection and Auxiliary Copy Operations (VaultTracker Enterprise Feature only)

All three methods provide the necessary options to run the export operation immediately or schedule the export operation to run for a later time.

You can configure the number of times an export operation must retry before it is aborted, and the retry interval minutes using the Export Operation Retry Count and the VaultTracker feature export retry interval in minutes options from the Media Management Configuration (Service Configuration) dialog box available in the Control Panel.

The following sections discuss the various export media options in depth.

Exporting Media using the Export Media Wizard

The Export Media Wizard provides the capability to quickly export one or more media from a library. This wizard is useful if you know the library containing the media you wish to export, as well as the media to be exported. You can choose to export media in 2 ways:

• using the VaultTracker/VaultTracker Enterprise feature, which provides all the options you need create tracking policies.
• from a list of available media in the library, from which you can select the appropriate media to be exported. The media will then be automatically placed in the appropriate mail slot for removal.

The Export Media Wizard is accessible at the Library and Media in Library levels in the CommCell^® Console. See Export Media using the Export Media Wizard for step-by-step instructions.

Exporting Media from a List

Media can be selected from a list of media and exported. This is useful when you wish to export several media at the same time and know either the media’s barcode, or slot number in which the media resides. This task can be performed from the following levels in the CommCell^® Console:

• Media List dialog box which appears when you select the View Media option. This dialog box can be accessed by right-clicking a Storage Policy copy.
• Media List dialog box which appears when you select the Change Data Path option. This dialog box can be accessed by right-clicking a Storage Policy copy.
• Media List dialog box which appears when you select the Media Not Copied option.  This dialog box can be accessed by right-clicking a Storage Policy and Storage Policy copy.

Once the media to be exported is selected, you can choose to use the VaultTracker^® feature to track the export operation by clicking on the Advanced button in the Export Media List dialog box. A Tracking policy can be created to export media based on the selected criteria.

See Export Media from a List using the VaultTracker Feature for step-by-step instructions.

Exporting Media using Tracking Policies

Tracking Policies help you to define what media must be moved, where it must be moved to, and when it should be moved. This is useful if you wish to schedule routine exports of media that have satisfied certain criteria.

• Library to location
• Location to location
• Location to library
• Library to library

Once a policy is created, you can view the media associated with that policy by right-clicking on the policy and selecting View Media.

When creating a policy, you can:

• Schedule the policy to run at a later time if you anticipate changes being made to the policy prior to media movement taking place. Policies can be scheduled to run daily, weekly, etc., if desired.
• Delay the export of the media, which creates a time gap between when the policy is run and when the media movement actions actually start. This provides time for you to create and review a VaultTracker Report with all the policy's actions detailed prior to any actions taking place. If any changes to the policy are required, you can perform these changes without aborting or rerunning an action.
• Temporarily stop an action by placing the export operation in a pending state for a specified amount of time. This is useful if you need to perform library maintenance or urgent data protection and recovery operations, but do not wish to abort or restart what has already been completed. You can manually restart the policy from the point it left off when the library is available, or you can set the policy to resume automatically at a specific time.

Once created, you can further facilitate Tracking Policies by right-clicking on the policy in the CommCell^® Console:

• Run the policy if you wish to initiate the policy without further delays or changes to the policy.

• Clone the policy to create an exact duplicate of the policy that retains all of the properties of the original policy. Once created, you can edit the properties of the policy, if necessary. This saves you the time of creating a new policy manually. (See Cloning Policies for more information.)
• Change the Properties of a policy if you wish to make changes to the configuration of the policy while it is still in the pending state.

For step-by-step instructions on creating and managing tracking policies, see the following:

• Create a Tracking Policy
• Clone a Tracking Policy
• Modify a Tracking Policy
• Delete a Tracking Policy
• View Media Associated with a Tracking Policy
• Run a Tracking Policy
• Schedule a Tracking Policy

See Also: Export Media

Removing Media from the Library

Once the export operation has been initialized, the media can then be removed from the library by ejecting the media from the library mail slots.

Recording Pending Actions

Once media is removed from the library, all media movement outside the library must be recorded to track the operation. Such outside media movements are referred to as Pending Actions. Once an action is initiated, the media will be displayed in the reconciliation report.

The following list provides links to diagrams that depict the various types of media movements and the options for recording pending actions:

• Media Movement between 2 Locations
• Media Movement from a Library to Location
• Media Movement from a Location to a Library
• Media Movement between 2 Libraries

The following pending actions can be recorded: Picked up - This option should be used to set the media location as In Transit, when the source is a location. (In the case of a library, this option will be automatically performed when the media is removed from the source library.) Reached Destination - This option should be used to indicate that the media has reached its destination. The pending action is considered to be completed and is displayed in the Tracking History. If the final destination is a library, this option will be automatically performed when the media is detected in the destination library. Return to Source - This option should be used to reset media location to the source location. This option is valid only when: The media is in the in-transit state. When the source is a location. (not a library) Abort - Aborts the pending action. Suspend - Temporarily discontinues all media movement for a specified amount of time. The media movement can be resumed manually or at a specified time. Resume - Media movement continues when a suspension has been lifted by either manually resuming the action or when the specified Suspend time has expired. Quit Time - Specify the amount of time to elapse for the action to abort. This is also configurable in the Media Management Configuration (Service Configuration) dialog box. The diagram on the right provides a summary of all pending actions. Note that some items are supported for VaultTracker Enterprise only.

You can view the pending actions in the CommCell Browser by right-clicking the VaultTracker icon under the Storage Resources icon, and then clicking Actions. All pending actions are displayed on the right-hand pane.

Acknowledging Pending Actions

The VaultTracker^® feature provides two ways of acknowledging pending actions:

• Manual Acknowledgement
• Automatic Acknowledgement

These are explained in the following sections.

Manual Acknowledgment

When you run a data protection operation, auxiliary copy operation, Export Media operation, or Tracking Policy with the auto-acknowledge option disabled, you must manually acknowledge the media movement actions. You can record the pending action either for all media associated with a specific movement, or for individual media associated with a specific movement.

There are two methods with which you can manually acknowledge pending actions:

1. Pre-acknowledge: All pending actions can be acknowledged assuming that the tapes will get to the destination.
2. Post-acknowledge: The Tracking Report with the Reconciliation option enabled can be generated. All media which are in transit are listed. Once a confirmation from offsite is received, all Pending Actions can be acknowledged.

See Monitor and Record the Status of a Media for step-by-step instructions.

Automatic Acknowledgment

When you create a Tracking Policy, you can enable the Auto-Acknowledge option within the policy. When such a policy is run, the system will automatically acknowledge all pending actions associated with the media movement if both source and destination is a location. If the source is a library, the pending actions will be automatically acknowledged when the media is removed from the library.

Note that the automatic acknowledgement option can be enabled (or disabled) for Tracking Policy and Media Export operations. Automatic acknowledgement is not available for Data Protection and Auxiliary copy operations.

See Set Automatic Tracking in a VaultTracker Policy for step-by-step instructions.

Viewing Tracking History

Once all the pending actions are recorded, the VaultTracker^® feature automatically catalogs the information in the Tracking History. Tracking History can be viewed from the CommCell^® Browser by right-clicking the Actions icon under VaultTracker, and then clicking View History. Filter options for viewing the history are also provided.

If you would like the information to be displayed in the Actions pane before it is moved to the history information, you can establish a display time using the Time in hours to show the VaultTracker history in actions pane option from the Media Management Configuration (Service Configuration) dialog box available in the Control Panel.

See View the Tracking History for step-by-step instructions:

Rolling back an action

The Roll Back option can be performed if both the source and destination locations were export locations and the media is listed in the history information after being marked as reached destination. This option provides the opportunity to rollback a wrong location change.

See Roll Back an Action in the Tracking History for step-by-step instructions.

Deleting an action

You can Delete a pending action history or delete individual media action history of a pending action.

See Delete an Action in the Tracking History for step-by-step instructions.

Pruning Tracking History

Tracking History information is by default pruned after 90 days. If necessary this value can be modified using the Days to keep VaultTracker^® records option from the Media Management Configuration (Vault Tracker Configuration) dialog box available in the Control Panel.

License Requirements

For information on license requirements, see VaultTracker^® Licenses in License Administration.

Related Reports

Vault Tracking Report

The Vault Tracking Report can be generated to view information about media managed by the VaultTracker^® feature, including pending actions, spare media that are due back, movement action history, and media related to a VaultTracker policy. Each Vault Tracking Report can be generated and saved in HTML, text, and Iron Mountain Report formats. Optionally, a style sheet can be selected to customize the XML output.

The Reconciliation option, if selected, will display all the tapes that are pending their arrival at the destination.

For information on generating and using the Vault Tracking Report, see Vault Tracking Report.

Media Information Report

The Media Information report can be generated by sorting the media based on the export location. This report can then be sent to an offsite person/agency to verify that the contents matches the information in the VaultTracker^® records.

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