User's Manual

92 Managing media
Notes
FSE medium volumes that store valid FSE user data are the volumes which:
• store some data that is referenced by the belonging File System Catalog (FSC).
• belong to an FSE media pool which is currently assigned to an FSE partition.
• have the parameter Used[%] greater than zero in the output of the command
fsemedium --list --volume.
FSE medium volumes that do not store valid FSE user data are the volumes for which any of the above
criteria is not met.
TIP: You can initiate formatting and initialization of a medium at once with the command
fsemedium --format Barcode --init. This command formats the medium and initializes all
medium volume created on it.
You can initialize a particular medium volume on the medium with the command
fsemedium --init Barcode --volume VolumeNumber.
Duplicating media
The FSE implementation provides an option to have multiple copies of the migrated data made
automatically during a migration job. You do this by configuring several FSE media pools for one FSE
partition. The number of media pools assigned to the same partition corresponds to the number of copies
the files will have on FSE media. For more information, see ”Multiple copying” on page 131.
Multiple copying is favorable with regards to recall, since you are able to recall your data from any
available copy. All media pools that are assigned to the same partition contain the same set of data,
however, it is not guaranteed that an individual medium from a certain media pool has a corresponding
medium with exactly the same data in another media pool. If you want to create an exact copy of an FSE
medium for eventual replacement of the original, you must duplicate the medium.
Media duplication is usually used for data vaulting, where media duplicates are put off-site to increase
data safety. It can also be useful in situations where a particular medium becomes worn out and the data
on it is still valuable.
NOTE: Media duplication is not available for disk media.
A duplicated medium is an exact copy of the original medium. An original medium and its copy have the
following characteristics:
• same medium volume headers, including medium volume UUIDs
• same Fast Recovery Information data, on system volume and all data volumes
• same data
• same media types and capacities
• different medium barcodes
How it works
An admin job is started to duplicate a medium. A medium duplication process first requests disk buffer
resources, allocates the original medium and then the target medium. If the prerequisites are met, the
medium duplication is started volume by volume. Once finished, the medium copy has the same attributes
and data as the original except for the medium barcode.