Veritas NetBackup™ Administrator's Guide, Volume II
- NetBackup licensing models and the nbdeployutil utility
- Additional configuration
- About dynamic host name and IP addressing
- About busy file processing on UNIX clients
- About the Shared Storage Option
- About configuring the Shared Storage Option in NetBackup
- Viewing SSO summary reports
- About the vm.conf configuration file
- Holds Management
- Menu user interfaces on UNIX
- About the tpconfig device configuration utility
- About the NetBackup Disk Configuration Utility
- Reference topics
- Host name rules
- About reading backup images with nbtar or tar32.exe
- Factors that affect backup time
- NetBackup notify scripts
- Media and device management best practices
- About TapeAlert
- About tape drive cleaning
- How NetBackup reserves drives
- About SCSI persistent reserve
- About the SPC-2 SCSI reserve process
- About checking for data loss
- About checking for tape and driver configuration errors
- How NetBackup selects media
- About Tape I/O commands on UNIX
About TapeAlert cleaning (reactive cleaning)
Reactive cleaning by using TapeAlert is a function of the tape drive. The drive determines and initiates the cleaning when needed. If a drive supports the TapeAlert capability and it is enabled on the drive, the NetBackup bptm process polls the drive for status from TapeAlert.
TapeAlert allows reactive cleaning for most drive types. Not all platforms, robots, drives, or firmware levels support TapeAlert reactive cleaning.
A drive with TapeAlert capability tracks how many read and write errors it has encountered within a certain time period. Although a drive can recover from these errors, the drive sets a CLEAN_NOW or CLEAN_PERIODIC flag when a threshold is reached.
If the bptm process detects that either of the following flags are set, it performs a cleaning at one of the following times:
At the end of a backup or a restore to the drive.
Before the next backup or restore to the drive.
Veritas recommends that you use reactive cleaning.