How to Manually Expire and Erase Backup Tape Media in Veritas NetBackup 6.5 Using Bpexpdate

There is nothing more frustrating than logging into your NetBackup server and seeing that backup tapes which should have expired are still assigned to a volume pool. Follow these steps to manually expire and erase your backup tapes in Veritas NetBackup 6.5 on a Windows Server platform by using the bpexpdate command.

Step One to Manually Expire and Erase Backup Tapes in Veritas NetBackup 6.5

The first thing to do is to log into the Windows Server that hosts your NetBackup Media server. You cannot use the NetBackup Administration Console GUI to expire tape media that is assigned to a volume pool. It does not matter if the NetBackup Administration Console shows that the tape has already expired. The GUI will not let you erase that data.

Open up the NetBackup Administration Console and take note of the media IDs for the backup tapes that need to be expired and erased.

Step Two to Manually Expire and Erase Backup Tapes in Veritas NetBackup 6.5

To expire and erase backup tapes that are assigned to a volume pool you must use the command line tools provided by Symantec, which owns Veritas. Open a command prompt by going to Start, Run, and typing CMD before hitting enter.

Navigate to the admincmd directory which should be located under NetBackup\bin directory. An example location is C:\Program Files\Veritas\NetBackup\bin\admincmd.

Step Three to Manually Expire and Erase Backup Tapes in Veritas NetBackup 6.5

Once you have navigated to the admincmd directory type the following command into the command prompt window. "Media ID" is the media ID that you noted in step one. You do not need to include the quotation marks. Once you have typed the command press enter.

bpexpdate -m "Media ID" -d 0

You will be prompted to make sure you would like to expire the backup tape and erase all of the data. Press "y" to confirm that you would like to manually expire and erase the backup tape. Do not press "y" unless you are absolutely sure there is no data on that backup tape that you need or will need in the future.

Step Four to Manually Expire and Erase Backup Tapes in Veritas NetBackup 6.5

Return to the NetBackup Administration Console. Expand Media and Device Management, expand Media, expand Media Groups, and click on your tape library to see the listing of your tape media. You should now see that the backup tapes have been erased and assigned to the default volume pool. You may have to refresh the view to see the updated tape information.

Please note: Although the tape media appears to be erased within NetBackup, the bpexpdate command only removes references to the data. The bpexpdate command does not completely remove data stored on the tape media.

Sources:

dcVAST
http://www.dcvast.com

http://www.symantec.com

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