NetVault 12.4 - Administration Guide for Managed Service Providers

Minimum life for imported backups

This setting specifies the minimum life for backups that are imported to the NetVault Database by scanning the backup media. This setting only applies to the backups that are not available in the NetVault Database.

When you import a backup, its data is temporarily stored in the NetVault Database for seven days. To change the default setting, type or select a new value. The minimum life setting is specified in number of days.

You can override the global setting by configuring the minimum life for imported backups at the time of scanning. For more information, see Scanning a disk-based storage device and Scanning tape media.

This setting does not affect the backups that have not reached their retirement age or generation count. For such backups, the backup life setting determines the retirement time.

Use barcodes as labels

You can configure NetVault Backup to automatically label blank media during backups by setting the Automatically Label Blank Media option in the Target Set.

By default, NetVault Backup assigns a system-generated string as the media label to blank media items. The string consists of the NetVault Backup Server Name, the current date, and a seed number. To assign media barcodes as the default label for blank media during backups, select this check box.

Continuation Restore Request Priority Boost

A continuation restore request occurs when an active restore job requires additional media for completion.

By default, these requests are assigned a priority level of 5 so that they are not preempted by other media requests and the active job is completed without any interruption. To change the default setting, type or select a value from 1 through 100. 1 denotes highest priority, while 100 denotes lowest priority. A job with a priority level of zero (0) runs as a background task.

Continuation Backup Request Priority Boost

A continuation backup request occurs when an active backup job requires additional media for completion.

By default, these requests are assigned a priority level of 5 so that they are not preempted by other media requests and the active job is completed without any interruption. To change the default setting, type or select a value from 1 through 100. 1 denotes highest priority, while 100 denotes lowest priority. A job with a priority level of zero (0) runs as a background task.

Label Request Priority

NetVault Backup assigns a priority level of 10 to bulk media labeling requests. To change the default priority setting, type or select a value from 1 through 100. 1 denotes highest priority, while 100 denotes lowest priority. A job with a priority level of zero runs as a background task.

Blank Request Priority

NetVault Backup assigns a priority level of 10 to bulk media blanking requests. To change the default setting, type or select a value from 1 through 100. 1 denotes highest priority, while 100 denotes lowest priority. A job with a priority level of zero (0) runs as a background task.

Bulk Label Callback Timeout

The callback timeout for bulk media labeling controls how long NetVault Backup waits for user inputs before ending these requests.

By default, NetVault Backup waits for 120 seconds for user confirmation. If confirmation is not received within the specified interval, the request is not carried out. To change the default setting, type or select a new value. The timeout value is specified in number of seconds.

Bulk Blank Callback Timeout

The callback timeout for bulk media blanking controls how long NetVault Backup waits for user inputs before ending these requests.

By default, NetVault Backup waits for 120 seconds for user confirmation. If confirmation is not received within the specified interval, the request is not carried out. To change the default setting, type or select a new value. The timeout value is specified in number of seconds.

Minimum interval between reporting online capacity

This setting determines how frequently the online media status is updated on the NetVault Backup WebUI.The default value is 10 minutes.

To change the default setting, type or select a new value. The update interval is specified in number of minutes.

Mark expired Read Only media as writable

This option prevents automatic reuse of retired read-only media.

When you select this check box, the read-only tag for a media item is automatically removed when the last saveset stored on it is expired, and the media item becomes available for re-use.

Existing read-only and expired media (all saveset are expired) prior to selecting this check box, will be writable when the next saveset is expired in the NetVault Backup after selecting this check box.

Maximum characters in a media request diagnosis

By default, NetVault Backup supports a maximum of 64,000 characters in the Diagnose Media Requests for Job dialog box. To change this setting, type or select a new value. The value is specified in thousands of characters.

Lesser number of characters may result in quicker output. However, the output may be truncated and you may not get the complete information. Therefore, you should not change the default value for this option.

Use Target media request timeout for Source media request

This option can be used to set timeout interval for source media requests. It applies to Plug-in for Consolidation, Plug-in for Data Copy, and Secondary Copy jobs.

When you select this check box, the timeout setting for the source media is automatically obtained from the Target Set defined for the job. If the required piece of media is not available within the specified interval, the job is aborted.

Force Process Media Request Queue Throttling

This setting allows NetVault Backup to interrupt the continuous processing of media request queues in very busy systems to allow other processing to occur. It determines the minimum response time between two media requests. The default value is 5 seconds. The value must be specified in number of seconds.

Life Of Segments Table Scan Results For Duplication

When performing Phase 2 Data Copy and Duplication jobs, the Media Manager stores the results of the Segments table scan so that it does not have to scan the table each time a media request is serviced. This setting determines the amount of time the cached results are retained by NetVault Backup.

The default value is 10 seconds. You can change it to any value between 10 and 1800 seconds.

Maximum number of sessions to retire at a time

By default, the Media Manager removes a maximum of 250 sessions per iteration. To change the default setting, type or select a new value.

Delete Unused Media Groups

This check box is selected by default.

When configuring the target media options for a backup job, the media group list only shows those groups that contain any media items. The Media Manager automatically removes unused media groups.

If you do not want to remove unused groups from the media group list, clear this check box.

Media Online Threshold (secs)

This setting allows you to select the time interval (in seconds) at which the NetVault Backup media manger updates the device status in the database.

Type or select the value. The default value is 0 second.The range for this setting is 0-600 seconds.

If the value of this setting is set to low, the device status is updated frequently resulting in overhead on media manager. If the number of media devices attached are few, then a lower value is preferred.

However, if more number of media devices are added then, enter a high value for this parameter.

Do not describe device activity in device window

Select this check box to stop status updates on the Device Activity page. It may help reduce the load on the NetVault Backup Server when several backup devices are added to the server.

Do not display drives that are available but not active

Select this check box to hide the offline devices on the Device Activity page.

Only check available drives and media when processing a media request

Select this check box to only check for available drives and media when a media request is received. It can be useful in large environment to reduce the network traffic generated by automatic checks. However, it may cause a delay in job startup when several jobs are started at the same time.

Only check available drives when processing a media request

Select this check box to only check for available drives when a media request is received.

Only check available media when processing a media request

Select this check box to only check for available media when a media request is received.

Do not issue Prevent/Allow Media Remove commands to drives

During backup and restore operations, the Media Manager issues PREVENT/ ALLOW MEDIUM REMOVAL SCSI commands to move a tape to or from a drive. If your library software can handle tape removal or ejection by itself and does not require any explicit commands to be sent to the drive, you can select this check box. When this check box is selected, the Media Manager skips the PREVENT/ALLOW MEDIUM REMOVAL SCSI commands during device operations.

Do not open a device if the serial number has changed

Select this check box to stop issuing commands to a device whose serial number has changed since its last configuration for NetVault Backup.

Unavailable device retry interval

Type or select the interval at which NetVault Backup tries to locate unavailable devices. The retry interval is specified in minutes. The default value is 30 minutes.

Allow library modification when jobs are running

Select this check box to allow a user to modify the library settings while it is in use.

Do Not Scan Unknown Media

When you add tapes to a library, and close the door (or restart the library), NetVault Backup takes inventory by reading the media barcodes. If NetVault Backup cannot find the barcode for a piece of media, it marks that tape as “UNKNOWN.” NetVault Backup loads each unknown tape into one of the drives to scan for backups and on-tape indices. On large systems, this process can increase the burden on the drive resources. If you do not want to scan unknown tapes and leave them as “UNKNOWN,” select this check box.

This setting applies to all new libraries that are added to the NetVault Backup Server. It does not change the setting for existing libraries. To apply this setting to an existing library, you must remove the library and re-add it.

Days of inactivity before an index is compressed

The online indexes are automatically compressed after 30 days of inactivity. To change the default inactivity period for index compression, type or select the new value.

To disable automatic compression of online indexes, set this option to zero (0).

Hours between scans for indexes to be compressed

This setting determines the interval at which the Media Manager scans the Media Database to identify backup indexes that can be compressed. The default value is 12 hours. To change the default interval, type or select a new value.

To disable Media Manager scans for index compression, set this option to zero (0).

Maximum number of indexes to be compressed/ uncompressed/offlined at a time

This setting determines the maximum number of backup indexes that can be simultaneously compressed, decompressed, or taken offline. The default value is 200 indexes. To change the default setting, type or select a new value.

Minimum Space For Index Decompression

The compressed backup indexes are automatically decompressed when you try to browse or restore the corresponding saveset. The minimum amount of space for index decompression is set to 500MB by default. This space is reserved on the drive or partition on which the NetVault Database resides. To change the minimum space for index decompression, type or select the new value. The space requirement is specified in MB.

A decompression request fails in the following circumstances:

If the decompression request fails, an error message is displayed. If the request was issued manually, the message is displayed on the Create Restore Job page. When index decompression is performed automatically, the message is displayed on the View Logs page.

Days of inactivity before an index is offlined

To automatically delete online indexes after a specified period of inactivity, type or select the value. The inactivity period is specified in number of days. The default value is zero (0), which disables automatic deletion of online indexes.

Hours between scans for indexes to be offlined

This setting determines the interval at which the Media Manager scans the Media Database to identify backup indexes that can be taken offline. The default interval is 24 hours. To change the default interval, type or select a new value.

To disable Media Manager scans for online index deletion, set this option to zero (0)

Life Of Index When Loaded From Offline

The nvrestore CLI utility automatically imports an offline index if it is needed for a restore job.

This setting determines how long the indexes imported by the nvrestore utility are retained in the NetVault Database. The default value is one (1) day. To change the default setting, type or select the number of days you want to retain the index. This value must be specified in number of days.