There is a bug with the way NetWorker 7.5.2 handles ADV_FILE devices in relation to disk evacuation. I.e., in a situation where you use NetWorker 7.5.2 to completely stage all savesets from an ADV_FILE device, the subsequent behaviour of NetWorker is contrary to normal operations.
If following the disk evacuation, either the standard overnight volume/saveset recycling checks are done, or an nsrim -X is explicitly called, before any new savesets are written to the ADV_FILE device, NetWorker will flag the depopulated volume as recyclable. The net result of this is that it will not permit new savesets to be written to the volume until such time as it is relabelled, or flagged as not recyclable.
When a colleague asked me to investigate this for a customer, I honestly thought it had to be some mistake, but I ran up the tests and dutifully confirmed that NetWorker under v7.5.2 was indeed doing it. However, it just didn’t seem right in comparison to previous known NetWorker behaviour, so I stepped my lab server back to 7.4.5, and NetWorker didn’t mangle the volume after it was evacuated. I then stepped up to 7.5.1, and again, NetWorker didn’t mangle the volume after it was evacuated.
This led me to review the cumulative patch cluster notes for 7.5.2.1 – while there’s been a more recent version released, I didn’t have it handy at the time. Nothing was mentioned on the notes that seemed to relate to this issue, but since I’d got the test process down to a <15 minute activity, I replaced the default 7.5.2 install with 7.5.2.1, and re-ran the tests.
Under 7.5.2.1, NetWorker behaved exactly as expected; no matter how many times “nsrim -X” was run after evacuating a disk backup unit volume, NetWorker did not mark the volume in question as recyclable.
My only surmise therefore is that one of the actual documented fixes in the 7.5.2.1 cumulative build, while not explicitly referring to the issue at hand, happened to (as a side-effect), resolve the issue.
To cut a long story short though, I would advise that if you’re backing up to ADV_FILE devices using NetWorker 7.5.2 that you strongly consider moving to 7.5.2 cumulative patch cluster 1 – i.e., 7.5.2.1.
