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88 Setting up the Dell™ DR Series System on Symantec™ NetBackup™ | July 2015
4. Verify that the media is added and click Close.
B.2.8 Space reclamation guidelines
General Guidelines
The DR Series system version 3.2 VTL feature is presented to operating systems and data management
applications alike as devices either through iSCSI or NDMP protocol connectivity. The DMA interfaces with the
virtual tape library and all its underlying components including the drives and media though these specific
protocols.
The DMA must interact with the virtual tape media during a recycle, reuse or media initialization process in
order for the DR to be able to reclaim space during its own cleaning cycle.
This two-step process is required so that the backup software can reconcile the space by marking the media
as expired then reusing it, consolidating space across volumes/tapes or by simply recycling the media into a
scratch pool. Once these operations have been completed the DRs own cleaning cycle should be used to
reclaim that virtual tape media space which in turn will free up physical space on the DR unit.
Implementing proper media pool, groups and recycling practices will allow the virtual tape media to be used
at optimal levels and that the underlying physical space be reclaimed accordingly by the scheduled DR
reclamation.