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The Value of a Free Pool in Data Protector Media Management

by Mr_T on 06-08-2011 01:57 AM - last edited on 06-08-2011 02:17 AM

Do you have an afternoon ritual of ensuring that each of your tape pools has enough scratch media to last the night?  Perhaps you've sat bolt upright from a sound sleep, soaked in sweat, gasping for breath at 2am on a Saturday morning as you remember that the development team was adding 3 TB of new data, and -- da da daaaaa -- YOU didn't provision extra scratch tapes in the weekly pool?

 

You know from experience the normal rate of media consumption for each of these pools, so you dutifully check each day before leaving work to ensure that you've placed enough scratch (free) media in each individual pool.  As long as the operators don't re-run a large backup, you should be okay.  And surely the application owners would have gotten your consent before causing a quantum increase in the amount of data you're backing up.

 

Man, there has got to be a better way!  Well yes, as a matter of fact, there is.



Let's start with a very simple example using these three tape pools:

 

  • Daily_Incr
  • Weekly_Full
  • Monthly_Offsite

We're going to create a "Free Pool" which will serve as a common source of scratch tapes for our daily, weekly, and monthly pools.  When we're done, there will be no scratch tapes in the individual pools at any given time. Scratch media will automatically be drawn from the free pool and moved to the appropriate individual pool on demand.  The cool thing is that works in both directions.  When a tape in an individual pool goes scratch (the last remaining object protection expires), there is a process that runs once a day to reclaim those scratch tapes and move them back to the free pool.

 

Free_Pool_Concept.jpg

 

Let's get to work!  Start in the DP GUI in the Devices & Media context.  Expand Media, right-click Pools then select Add Free Pool...

 

Add_Free_Pool.jpg

 

We're using a Pool Name of Free_Pool (clever, huh?) and a Description of Scratch Media.  LTO-Ultrium is our Media Type.  Proceed by clicking Next 

 

Add_Free_Step_1.jpg

 

Here is your last task before completion.  We're going to stick with the defaults of Valid for (Months) and Maximum overwrites.  You can run those up as high as 828 and 9999, respectively.  Clicking the Set to Default button will do exactly that -- set them back to 36 and 250 if you have changed them.  Click the Finish button.

 

Add_Free_Step_2.jpg

 

Great, so we have a free pool now.  Put some scratch media there either by moving existing scratch media or by (re)formatting tapes and specifying Free_Pool as the destination.

 

Now it's time to configure our other pools to use the free pool.  We'll use Daily_Incr as an example.  Pull up the properties page for Daily_Incr.

 

Daily_Incr.jpg

 

 The modification is really quite simple.  Switch from the General to the Allocation tab.  Check the box for Use free pool.  This should automatically select your designated free pool (if you have only one) and also enable Move free media to free pool.

 

 Daily_Incr2.jpg

 

Make the same changes for any other pools that you wish to associate with this free pool.  (Weekly_Full and Monthly_Offsite in our example.)

 

So that's it then!  You now have a reservoir from which any of three tape pools can draw scratch media without human intervention.  You're also set so that media that goes scratch will return to the free pool automatically.  Simply keep a generous amount of scratch tapes in the free pool, and you will never again have to jump from the dinner table and avert disaster by hastily chucking extra scratch tapes into an individual pool.

 

It should go without saying, but your free pool scratch tapes should be in the tape library vs. on a shelf or in the vault.  Otherwise, you could still end up with a mount request and a delayed backup.

 

One final note:  By default, DP sweeps through all media pools using a free pool, collects all expired media, and moves them back to the free pool.  This happens once each day at midnight.  You can optionally increase this frequency by specifying the number of times per day up to a total of 96 (every 15 minutes).  The controlling parameter is found in the global options file.

 

# FreePoolDeallocFreq=TimesPerDay
FreePoolDeallocFreq=4

# default: 1
# limit: 1 <= FreePoolDeallocFreq <= 96
# This  period is  used  to  run  free pool deallocation process
# on Data Protector Cell Manager (Media Mgmt DB).
# If set to 1,  deallocation  is performed once per day (00:00),
# set to 2 two times per day (00:00,12:00), set to 3 three times
# per day (00:00, 08:00, 16:00),  set to 4 four  times  per  day
# (00:00, 06:00, 12:00, 18:00).  If maximum (96)  is  specified,
# free pool deallocation will be started every 15 minutes.

 

In our example, I have modified the FreePoolDeallocFreq such that the process will run four times a day (every 6 hours beginning at midnight).

 

Keep in mind that DP services must be stopped and restarted before the global options file will be reparsed making changes effective.  Default file locations on your Cell Manager are as follows.

 

Unix
/etc/opt/omni/server/options/global

Windows (2003 and earlier)
C:\Program Files\OmniBack\Config\Server\Options\global

Windows (2008 and beyond)
C:\ProgramData\OmniBack\Config\Server\Options\global 

 

Hopefully I've provided enough information to get you started with free pools.  Clearly this isn't a cure-all.  If your shop is small and you only have one media pool, it makes little if any sense to configure a free pool.  In contrast, large shops with many separate tape pools will benefit greatly from the eased manageability enabled by free pools.

 

Thank you for tuning in again this week, and comments are welcome as always!

 

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by Gmiester(anon) on 06-08-2011 05:56 PM
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Great info! It works great in one of our environments.

Question: What would be justification for setting this value to 96 (to scan all the media pools for Expired media every 15 minutes)? We have ours set up this way. We have a mirade of hourly backups which may be the reason,but there appears to be a sufficient supply of tapes in the free pool at least every 6 hours (if the value was set to 4)). A side question: If the media pool is Appendable with Loose, then data should be appending to tapes anyway and not pulling from the Free pool. Right?

0
by Mr_T on 06-08-2011 10:47 PM
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Thank you kindly for your comments, Gmiester.  Glad to hear a free pool works well for you.

 

I've often wondered myself what would possibly justify sweeping expired media back into the free pool so frequently.  Perhaps if you had an extremely high-volume environment with low-capacity tapes such that numerous cartridges were going scratch hourly, you might want to be very aggressive lest your free pool run dry before a single, daily reclamation.  But in my experience, once a day is fine.  Maybe twice or four times a day if that's what it takes to keep the free pool sufficiently stocked.  Still, it's a low-bandwidth database function, so it shouldn't affect performance even at 96 times a day.

 

On your second point, yes, with loose/appendable, DP should go after any media presently in the pool that is writable and not yet full.  Only if those writable tapes are unavailable (in use, not in library, or poor) and more are needed will scratch tapes be pulled from the free pool.  If expired tapes are in the pool because they have not yet been moved back to the free pool, certainly those would be utilized before drawing from the free pool.  Sort your pool based upon (allocation) order.  Any tapes in the pool eligible for writing will have an order.  Those that are full, non-appendable, or rated poor will have no allloc order.

 

Alloc_Order.jpg

 

Thanks again for taking the time to share your thoughts!

 

Warm regards,

Mr_T

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