SAP Note 19226 - On-Archive: Release of volumes after the "expiry date"

Symptom:

The backup medium used for On-Archive cannot be used, even after the "expiry date" has been reached.

In attempting to carry out a backup with On-Archive,
the following error message is output:
No available volume found!

Cause and prerequisites

ON-Archive finds no free volumes.

1. There are enough volumes, but they have not been released.

2. You need to create new volumes in the volume manager.

Solution

To 1): There are enough volumes, but they have not been released.
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Volumes with expired requests must be released using the onautovop process.

Requests whose expiry date has been reached or exceeded are deleted from the volume manager using onautovop. The effect of deleting the requests is that the volumes of the VolumeSet in which the requests were saved are marked as 'free' in the volume manager.

Such 'free' volumes may be used for archive/backup.

Reason for not releasing volumes:
-> OnArchive still has requests with status 'new'

With the following procedure you can change the status of these requests from 'new' to 'cancelled', which allows them subsequently to be deleted:

a) Display all requests with status 'new'.
onarchive 'list/req=*/status=New'

b) Complete display of every request with status 'new'.
Onarchive> LIST/REQ=*/FULL

Example for the resulting display:
The "Expiry date" can be read directly. Request ID : 00000005
Username : xx4711@informix
Former RID : ******** Former SID : ***
Issue Date : 15-Mar-1995 16:29:29 Expiry Date : 12-Apr-1995 17:29:33
Exec. Date : 15-Mar-1995 16:29:33 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Status : NEW
Command : BACKUP/LOGFILE/CONTINUOUS/VSET=volset1
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Note down the numbers of the expired requests, that is requests whose expiry date was exceeded.

c) Cancel the expired requests.
onarchive 'cancel/request=xx'

d) Delete the canceled requests.
onarchive 'remove/request=xx'

e) Release the volumes.

start_autovop (At shell level as user Informix)

If volumes in the volume manager are to be made available again, "start_autovop" should be run at shell level.

'start_autovop', as described above, deletes requests from the volume manager which have reached or exceeded their expiry date, thus releasing the volumes in which the requests were stored for further use by the volume manager.


to 2): You need to create new volumes in the volume manager.
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Using the script 'arc_volum', add new volumes to the appropriate VSET (see SAP backup and archiving documentation.)

Additional key words

expiry date, volumes not released, no available volume found