What are the steps to be taken in the eMAM and Archive Middleware storage side when a tape gets faulty and its data has been retrieved?

What are the steps to be taken in the eMAM and Archive Middleware storage side when a tape gets faulty and its data has been retrieved?

Steps to be taken in eMAM and Archive Middleware storage side when the tape gets faulty and its data has been retrieved

When an archive request is made by a user, eMAM Archive manager passes the information like UUID, storage location etc to corresponding Archive  Middleware. When the Middleware gets the archive request, it will check the accessibility of asset, whether the asset is available in the corresponding storage location. Once the confirmation is made, archive Middleware starts processing the asset and corresponding status will be passed to eMAM upon completion. 
Once the successful response is received from the Middleware to the Archive Manager, and if the Delete file flag is enabled in the storage configuration, the asset will be deleted from the corresponding storage location.


However due to some reasons, if the tapes which contain the archived assets gets faulty while eMAM tries to restore those assets, it will result in an error. As you aware, the Archive Middleware stores the assets with UUID as filename (same as the eMAM stores in storage) in tapes.

To perform re-linking of these assets on faulty tape, we have to either recover back the assets from the faulty tapes or you have to backup these assets.

  • Once the assets are recovered from faulty tape, we will be cross checking the asset data with the data in eMAM DB. File size, duration etc.
  • Once the analysis process is completed, we will rename the assets with there UUID (if needed, because if the file is recovered from faulty tape, the filename will be in UUID. but if it is a backup raw copy, we have to change it to UUID).
  • As per the eMAM DB, these assets are marked as archived assets, so we have to change it to the not-archived status.
  • The Archive Middleware also needs to clean up the records for these assets otherwise when eMAM tries to re-archive the assets, it will pass a success message to eMAM (because the files are already archived). So, there won't be any physical file movement or re-archive.
  • Move the assets to corresponding eMAM Storages.
  • Once the transfer and status update process is finished from eMAM, we will push them for re-archive.
  For any further assistance, please get in touch with eMAM support at support@emamonline.com. 

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