Hello,

here's the info that's at my disposal, it's not an official document.

How networker selects a volume for writing :

After a backup starts and the Networker server determines what pool the save 
set should be written to, it’s now necessary to determine what volume within 
the pool to use.

5 categories in order of priority : (each requiring the volume available on an 
appropriate storage node)

        - mounted, appendable volume from the required pool
          Not currently mounted ? Server sends an Alert “Volume not immediately 
available” and
          continues search.
        - unmounted, appendable volume from the required pool
        - unmounted, recyclable volume from the required pool
        - unmounted recyclable volume from a different pool  (disabled by 
default) 

        Now it depends if “Auto media management “ is enabled or not.
                - not enabled : volume request Is not cleared from Alerts and 
administrator
                                  must manually provide a volume
                - enabled : networker looks for 1 more category

        - unmounted, unlabeled volume (any volume without a Networker or EDM 
(EMC 
          Datamanager) label.




Best regards,

Jacques Lapeire

-----Original Message-----
From: EMC NetWorker discussion [mailto:NETWORKER AT LISTSERV.TEMPLE DOT EDU] On 
Behalf Of Michael Leone
Sent: Thursday, June 07, 2012 3:07 PM
To: NETWORKER AT LISTSERV.TEMPLE DOT EDU
Subject: [Networker] Precedence of use - expired or blank tape, in the same 
pool?

I have a question from my legal staff. Let's suppose I create a tape with 
a 2 months browse/retention policy. And I leave it in my library for more 
than 2 months - i.e., it is now older than it's expiration period, and is 
therefore recyclable (all savesets on the tape have expired). And I also 
have new blank tapes that are labeled in the same pool.

Which will NW use first, if it needs a tape - will it re-label the 
recyclable tape, or will it use one of the blank unused tapes in the same 
pool? And what settings would control that?

(the reason for the question - we are legally prevented, at the moment, 
from overwriting any tape. So they want to know what will happen if we 
happen to put in an old tape that has expired, but have forgotten to slide 
the switch to make the tape read-only. Will that tape be overwritten 
first, or will NW use unused, labeled tapes in the same pool first)

-- 
Michael Leone
Network Administrator, ISM
Philadelphia Housing Authority
2500 Jackson St
Philadelphia, PA 19145
Tel:  215-684-4180
Cell: 215-252-0143
<mailto:michael.leone AT pha.phila DOT gov>