Two auto-changers sharing jobs

[Chris Boot]

Hi all,

I have a system with two Quantum SuperLoader 3 auto-changers, both with
an LTO-8 drive each. The same media is readable and writeable by either
drive from either library. Bareos has been working with one library and
drive for some time, but we now want to configure the 2nd library.

The intention is to have jobs able to write to whatever tapes are
available in either library; basically so that two jobs can write at the
same time in order to double throughput. How can we achieve that?

I've configured the SD with two Autochanger and two Device resources,
and the director with two Storage resources that refer to each
autochanger. This allows commands such as "list slots storage=Tape-1",
"update slots storage=Tape-2", and so on.

What's not working is starting a job with storage=Tape-1 vs
storage=Tape-2. What seems to happen is Bareos picks a tape from the
pool that's available in either changer, mounts it in whatever drive can
access it even if it's the other drive/changer to the one requested.
When it's in the other drive/changer, the storage on the volume is
updated to the storage on the job, and things start to fall apart.

For example, I started a job with "run job=MyJob storage=Tape-1". Bareos
selected a tape in the Tape-2 Storage/Autochanger/Device and mounted it
correctly in the wrong Device, then updated the volume record to change
its storage from "Tape-2" to "Tape-1" even though it's actually writing
to the tape via "Tape-2".

Running "update slots storage=Tape-2" fixes this, but only for a while;
Bareos soon forces it back to the wrong storage.

So as far as I can tell the SD is configured correctly and doing what
the Director is telling it to do, but the Director doesn't seem to be
able to tell the two sets of devices apart.

Is there some way around this issue? Can I achieve what I'm trying to do?

Thanks,
Chris

--
Chris Boot
bo...@boo.tc

[Bruno Friedmann (bruno-at-bareos)]

Maybe your sentence is not enough clear: "The same media is readable and writeable by either drive from either library."
To me it sound like the two autochanger are seen as one big library on the system to 2 tapes drives and a lot of slots.

It they are not, then you will have to play with media type so have LTO-8a LTO-8b to make them unique (storage/mediatype) and as such Bareos will not get confused.

Of course that mean also you will have always export and reimport into the same library the used tapes.

Advise in that case, maybe a dedicated scratch pool is useful to not mix them.

[Chris Boot]

Hi Bruno,

The two libraries are independent units; Autochanger-1 can't load tapes
into Tape-1 and vice versa. But all the tapes are LTO-8 and can be
loaded in either library, and written/read by either tape drive. We
expect to be able to load spare tapes into either library, and have
Bareos be able to pick any free tape to write to.

I really want to avoid having different pools or media types as we
really don't want to have to put tapes back in the same library they
came from.

Is there any way I can achieve that?

Best regards,
Chris

On 05/10/2023 09:41, Bruno Friedmann (bruno-at-bareos) wrote:
> Maybe your sentence is not enough clear: /"The same media is readable
> and writeable by either drive from either library."/

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--
Chris Boot
bo...@boo.tc


--
Chris Boot
bo...@boo.tc

[Bruno Friedmann (bruno-at-bareos)]

If you read carefully the documentation, I fear you can't achieve what you expect ! 

You will have to have the red-pills and blue-pills autochanger and make one media type per unit, and then off course reload tape in the right autochanger (except the blank or expired which can be removed and loaded into the other one).

[Andreas Rogge]

Did you set "Autochanger = yes" in the Storage-Resource of the Director?
When you set this, Bareos will start to honor the InChanger flag and the
Storage. If you don't set it, Bareos will ignore both.

Best Regards,
Andreas


--
Andreas Rogge andrea...@bareos.com
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