How do I know if I have a volume that is FROZEN or SUSPENDED?

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well, you'll be able to tell if you look at the error logs when NetBackup tries to use it... :-)

You cannot see this information in the Media Management GUI, but you can run the /usr/openv/netbackup/bin/goodies/available_media script to see this info. (Version 3.2) The "Media Summary" report run either from the administration GUI or the command line (bpmedialist -summary) also will flag you on frozen media, but only if the tapes are in a pool. The report doesn't give much useful information for the scratch pool, unfortunately.

The training materials I have say that a tape goes into the frozen state when it is first used and NetBackup detects another format already on the tape.

It goes on to say that the frozen state can be "set by command to protect backups from aging out of the images database." I don't know what that means. (Will update here when I find out.)

In my experience I find myself with several tapes in the frozen state that have valid images on them, and I never issued the command to freeze them. (Will update here when I find out more.) You can use a command line utility to set a tape volume to FROZEN or SUSPENDED.

Run:

bpmedia -suspend -ev XXXXXX

or

bpmedia -freeze -ev XXXXXX

where XXXXXX is the tape number.

If a volume is SUSPENDED the system will not write to it until all the backup images on that volume have expired.

If a volume is frozen the system will not write to it even after all the backup images on that volume have expired. You also might want to try using the available media script. This will provide the infomation you might want about the tapes in the scratch pool.

generally located at: /usr/openv/netbackup/bin/goodies/available_media

-nat