Deconfiguring Libraries and Drives

Overview

You may deconfigure a library or drive if:

The device is irreparably damaged.
You want to remove the library from the CommCell altogether.

Deconfiguring a library or drive disables software communications between the MediaAgent and the device. Deconfiguring a library also releases the license associated with the library.

You cannot carry out any operation (e.g., data protection, data recovery, maintenance operations) using a deconfigured library or drive. You can however re-use the media and the data available in the media by importing them to another library with similar or compatible drive types and then adding a data path to the new library from the storage policy copy that was originally used to perform data protection.

You can view the deconfigured libraries and the media (with contents) associated with the deconfigured libraries from the CommCell Console. See Delete Deconfigured Libraries.

If you do not have library with compatible drive types in the CommCell, and wish to preserve the data for future restore/recover purposes, perform an Auxiliary Copy operation using another library to create secondary copies, before deconfiguring the library.

All the counters and history information associated with the library or drive will be lost, when it is deconfigured.

Consider the following, when you deconfigure libraries or drives:

To re-use all the media in another library with similar or compatible drive types, add a data path to the new library from the storage policy copies that were originally used to perform data protection. (See View the Storage Policies Accessing a Library for step-by-step instructions on how to view the storage policies associated with a library.)
You do not have to delete the storage policy to deconfigure the library. Keep in mind that all the data in the media will be lost and media will be recycled when a storage policy copy is deleted.
Before you deconfigure a library, verify and ensure that none of the Storage Policy Copy's default data path points to the library. (See View the Storage Policies Accessing a Library for step-by-step instructions on how to view the storage policies associated with a library.) If necessary, set an alternate data path as the default data path before deconfiguring the library.
If you have a storage policy copy with no default data path, use Change Data Path option to migrate the storage policy to point to another data path. See Change Data Path for more information.
As the number of configured drives in a drive pool cannot be smaller than the largest number of streams used by any storage policy that accesses that drive pool, verify and if necessary reduce the number of streams in storage policy copies to be equal to the number of functional drives in the drive pool. For example, assume that a drive pool containing four drives is accessed by a four-stream storage policy. If you wish to deconfigure one of the drives, you must first reduce the four-streamed storage policies to three-streams.

Previous database backups using multiple streams cannot be restored if the number of streams in a storage policy is reduced.
To re-use the storage policy associated with the deconfigured library, Change Data Path or Add a Data Path to a Storage Policy Copy.
When you deconfigure the library from one of the MediaAgents that share a library in the SAN environment, check and verify that the Auto Configure DDS DrivePool and Auto Configure Failover Library Controllers options are disabled in the Library Properties dialog box in the Library and Drive Configuration window. If these options are not disabled, the system will automatically configure the library when the services in the MediaAgent are re-started.
If you have any discovered spare WORM media in a Blind Library, then deconfiguring the library will leave the discovered spare WORM Media unusable. The media cannot be used when the library is configured back again. So apply caution when adding WORM media to a Blind Library for spare use.