Dell NetWorker 19.9 Administration Guide

Auto Media Management

Auto Media Management gives the NetWorker server automatic control over media that are loaded in the storage device.

When you enable the Auto Media Management feature during device configuration, the NetWorker server automatically:

• Labels the volume (recognizes EDM labels and does not overwrite them).
  NOTE:If the Auto Media Management feature is enabled, the NetWorker server considers volumes that were labeled by a different application to be valid re-label candidates. Once the NetWorker server re-labels the volume, the previously stored data is lost.
• Mounts the volume.
• Overwrites volumes that are consider to be unlabeled. The NetWorker server considers a volume to be unlabeled under the following conditions:
  • Has no internal label.
  • Is labeled with information other than a NetWorker label.
  • Is labeled with a NetWorker label, but the density that is indicated on the internal label differs from that of the device where the volume is mounted.
• Recycles volumes eligible for reuse that are loaded into the device.

When you do not enable the Auto Media Management feature, the NetWorker server ignores unlabeled volumes and does not use the volume for backup.

The Auto Media Management feature can re-label a volume that has a different density, it is possible, inadvertently, to overwrite data that still has value. For this reason, be careful if NetWorker volumes are shared among devices with different densities.