Question

7 years old tape

1 year ago
10 January 2023
4 replies
116 views

Userlevel 2

Kelvin
Byte
50 replies

Hi,

We have just replaced the Commvault with another backup solution recently, and therefore, we are going to decommission the Commvault (nothing wrong with Commvault though, it’s just a decision made by the headquarter where the Netbackup had already got a larger deployment scale).

However, there is a problem.

We have some Commvault tape backups which by regulation, need to be kept for 7 years. Therefore, in theory, we need to keep the existing Commvault (somewhere) for the same duration, right ?

But, I’ve noticed 2 things about those tapes

The backups on those tapes don’t really have 7 year retention, it’s merely the fact that they are kept off-site (by a 3rd vendor) for 7 years ! In other words, all of those backups have already expired in the Commvault catalog.
Even those tapes themselves are no longer in the Commvault

So, my question is, giving the circumstance, is there still any point of keeping the Commvault ? Or the Commvault can still retrieve data from those tapes for restore, should it be needed one day ?

Thanks,

Kelvin

4 replies

Userlevel 4

+10

Hi @Kelvin

If the tapes have been sitting off-site and not re-used, the data is still physically written to the tape.

So even if the retention in CV isn’t 7 years and the jobs will have logically aged in Commvault, however they can still be restored as the data is still intact on the tapes that have not been recycled or overwritten. There is a Tape Catalog and Merge feature that you could use to restore the data previously written to this Commcell from the aged tapes, even if the data has been removed from the Commserve DB. Would also recommend enabling the read-only tab if possible on these tapes to prevent any accidental overwrite.

Please see the documentation and steps here - https://documentation.commvault.com/2022e/expert/11988_recovering_aged_data_overview.html

If you are moving away from CV and need to maintain this for restore purposes, make sure to keep a copy of the Commserve DB as long as the retention of the tapes as well.

Let me know if you have any questions.

Userlevel 2

Kelvin
Author
Byte
50 replies
1 year ago
11 January 2023

Hi Matt,

Could I ask you 2 more questions

How do I make a copy of the CV DB - I mean, where do I find it in the first place?
Why I can’t find many of those tapes in the CV - I mean, did CV remove aging tapes from its DB automatically ?

Thanks very much !

Kelvin