Tape Management Overview

Commvault^® software manages all media from a physical and logical perspective. Understanding the methods used to manage media from initial discovery—to its eventual destruction is important for effective media administration. This section details concepts and administrative tasks for proper media management.

Common physical actions:

Physical media management refers to any action performed that will physically cause actions within the library, such as:

• Export tapes from the library
• Import and discover tapes added to the library
• Physically erase tapes
• Load and unload tapes into drives

Common logical actions:

Logical management of media focuses on the media group and the state of tape, which is represented by a media icon. Logical actions include:

• Load and unload tapes into drives
• Move a tape to another media group
• Delete tape or delete contents of a tape
• View contents of a tape
• Retire a tape

Media Icons

All tapes within a library are associated with a media status icon. These icons are used to quickly identify key attributes of a tape.

Note that colors representing the different icons may not be accurately shown in print.

Tape library media icons

To find a complete list of all status icons in Commvault Online Documentation:

1. Go to – documentation.commvault.com | Search: Media Icons
2. The first result is – Identifying Media Icons

Media Lifecycle

The lifecycle of a tape is tracked from the time of initial discovery to the time of its logical destruction. The logical lifecycle of a tape is different than the physical life. Logical management of tapes are managed with tapes in or outside the library.

The Logical management of tape media is organized in the following media groups:

• Scratch Group – manages new or recycled media
• Cleaning – is reserved for library cleaning tapes
• Retired – manages tapes that exceed usage thresholds or are manually marked bad
• Overwrite Protect – manages tapes that are manually prevented from aging
• Foreign – manages tapes from a different CommCell^® environment or a different backup vendor
• Catalog – manages tapes that are marked to be cataloged
• Assigned – manages tapes with active jobs currently retained and managed by storage policy copies

Tape media lifecycle managed by media groups

The following steps represent how the process works:

1. New tapes are placed in the library as undiscovered.
2. The library scans the slots, discovers the tape and marks it as spare media in the Scratch group.
3. The tape is selected for a job where it becomes assigned media in the Active media group.
4. The tape is then appendable; where additional jobs can be written to the media until the tape is marked full.
5. Once all jobs are aged from the tape, the tape is marked as aged and placed back into the Scratch group.
6. Tapes can also be marked as locked down where they will be placed in the Overwrite Protect group.
7. Once a tape exceeds its usage thresholds, it is marked bad and placed in the Retired Media group.
8. Cleaning media is designated as such and placed in the Cleaning Media group.

Lifecycle steps for tape media from discovery to assigned to aged