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Prevent a Media From Being Exported
Creating an Exportable Media Set
Exporting is the process by which you physically remove one or more media from a library. If a data protection operation requests an exported media, depending on the options selected for the library in the Media tab of the Library Properties dialog box, one of the following operation will be performed:
However, if a restore or auxiliary copy job requires data from an exported media, the system will prompt you to import the media in order to complete the operation. Information about exported media will be retained in the system; they do not have to be rediscovered if they are re-imported.
| If a media is reserved by a job for a read or write operation, the media cannot be exported. |
When a media is exported an optional entry to specify the storage location for the media is provided. This information, can be viewed or updated in the Media Properties dialog box. This feature helps you to keep track of the exported media. The exported media are displayed with the location in the Exported Media pool in the CommCell Console.
| Media that is left in the mail slot after an export operation will be treated as an exported media. Pop-up messages associated with media outside the library and the media information in the CommCell Console will indicate that the media is in the IEPort associated with the mail slot. | |
| You can use VaultTracker and Media Repository in VaultTracker to manage media residing outside the library. |
There are two ways to remove the media from the library:
Removing media through a mail slot offers the following advantage: The inventory update that is triggered by a mail slot export is much less time-consuming than the full inventory operation that is triggered when you close the library door. However, under certain circumstances you may want to open the library door even though a mail slot is available. For example, if you want to remove many media from a library at once, it may be faster to open the door than to use the mail slot.
| Removing media from and closing the mail slots of some libraries may trigger a full inventory operation (rather than an inventory update). |
When the mail slot is full, the system retries the export operation and the number of retries is based on the Export Operation Retry Count option in the Media Management Configuration (Service Configuration) dialog box available in the Control Panel.
Information about exported media can be obtained from the following:
In addition, you can also use the Media Information Report to obtain a list of media that can be exported.
Media can be exported in several ways:
These are explained in detail in the following sections.
There are four ways to export media from a library to an outside location depending on the needs of your organization:
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:
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.
See Exporting Media using VaultTracker and VaultTracker Enterprise for more information on exporting media using VaultTracker and VaultTracker Enterprise.
If you wish to export only one specific media, and know where the media is available in the library, you can use this option. A specific media can be exported from the following levels in the CommCell Console:
See Export a Specific Media for step-by-step instructions.
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:
For more information, see Export Media From a List.
The VaultTracker license provides the capability to track media movement between two locations. It is also used to export media.
The VaultTracker Enterprise license provides the capability to track media movement between several locations. In addition to the standard VaultTracker features, it also provides several advanced capabilities.
You can export media using the VaultTracker Feature software and VaultTracker Enterprise Feature in the following ways:
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.
When media is exported, the option to use auto-acknowledge pending media movement action is provided. Additionally, VaultTracker Enterprise provides the capability of using virtual mail slots.
For step-by-step instructions on exporting media using VaultTracker and VaultTracker Enterprise, see the following:
For in-depth overviews of VaultTracker and VaultTracker Enterprise, see the following:
If for some reason, you would like to prevent media from being exported from a library, the Prevent Export option has been provided. If necessary, media that has been prevented for export can also be allowed to be exported using the Allow Export option. In the CommCell Browser, the Prevent Export and Allow Export operations can be performed on a specific media, from the scratch pool and the Media in Library levels.
Scheduled media export can be performed using VaultTracker.
Appropriate event messages to indicate the start and completed/failed status of a scheduled media export job are logged in the Event Viewer.
| Do not use the Schedule Media Export operation on a library which does not have a mail slot. |
For more information on creating schedules, see Scheduling.
Use this feature to mark all the media in a library or in all the libraries as exported. This feature is useful when you wish to replace a MediaAgent or a library. In such situations, you can mark all the media in a library as exported, before changing the data paths for all the storage policy copies that access the MediaAgent or library. (See Change Data Path for information.)
As this option logically marks all the media as exported in the CommServe database it will enable you to re-import the media into the library after changing the data paths.
Use this feature to perform the following:
This operation can be performed in the CommCell Browser from the Library level, or at the Exported Media group level or individually for the specific media.
See Set Media Location in Bulk and Set Media Location for a Specific Media for step-by-step instructions.
The Exported Media pool is the logical repository for all media which were previously discovered and subsequently exported from the library.
From the CommCell Console, you can view the properties such as the media location, container, barcode, Storage Policy/Storage Policy Copy, last write time, and size of stored data for the media listed in this pool.
In addition the following operations can be performed on the media available in the Exported Media pool:
For Stand-alone drives, all the media residing outside the drive will be listed in the Exported Media Pool.
Media containing data that are marked extended retention is displayed with the suffix (E). This will help you identify media containing data marked for extended retention. See Tape Handling for more information.
It may be necessary to export a set of media, either a one-time operation or scheduled export operation. For example, to export the daily backups to an offsite storage location. This can be accomplished using Export Media Using VaultTracker.
In addition you can use the following options, if the daily backups should be directed to a new set of media, which is in turn exported using a scheduled export operation.
Consider the following when the you select the Start New Media option:
Consider the following example:
If the Allow other schedule to use media set option is also not enabled, jobs 1 and 2 will be written to a new media and jobs 3 and 4 may or may not be written to the same media, depending on whether the job gets a reservation for the operation within the 2 minute interval.
By default, the MediaAgent retains the container and export location associated with the Media. These associations are viewable from the Media Properties - General tab. If necessary, you can enable a global option in the library from the Library Properties -Media tab, to automatically remove these associations when the media is brought back in to the library.
Operations performed with this feature are recorded in the Audit Trail. See Audit Trail for more information.