How to control auto-eject behavior of media inside standalone tape drives or RDX in Backup Exec.

Problem

In Backup Exec, backup, restore, duplicate, and other jobs automatically eject the media inside the tape drive or RDX if the media is not suitable for the current job. This may be either because the tape belongs to the wrong media set or RDX is limited to read-only operations or tape does not contain the data selected for restore. In such cases, Back Exec ejects the media and the job remains in a queued state waiting for the drive to be inserted with the correct media.

With the default eject behavior, you cannot troubleshoot the issue remotely and instead you need to replace the ejected media (which required on-site assistance).

Error Message

N/A

Cause

N/A

Solution

A new alert is added in job workflow for standalone tape drives and RDX devices for which you have to decide if you want to eject the media, before the media ejects automatically.

A new alert is displayed and you can cancel the operation without ejecting the media, troubleshoot the issue, and then run the job again.

The alert text changes depending on the type of job.

New Alert Behavior:

If you click Respond OK, the media is ejected and Media Remove and Media Insert alerts are displayed as observed in the earlier behavior of the auto-eject workflow.

If you click Respond Cancel, the media is not ejected and job is canceled.

This new alert is displayed for 15 minutes. You can customize this time using the Media Remove alert category. If you do not respond to the alert at the given time (either manually or auto-response) then the job ejects the media.

For remote administrators

Changes are targeted for:

• Standalone tape drives
• RDX

This change is applicable to the following jobs:

• Backup
• Restore
• Duplicate
• Verify

This change is also applicable to jobs that reach the end of media and the media inside the tape drive is ejected so that new media can be inserted.

Notes:

• If you do not want an automatic eject, configure the Media Remove alert category to have No or Cancel selected as the auto-responses to the new eject-approval alert.
• If you want the default eject behavior to happen automatically, configure the Media Remove alert category to have Yes selected as the auto-response to the new eject-approval alert.
• With the new alert, you may see a delay of 15 mins in media ejecting for unattended backups, or restores spanning multiple media.