About NetBackup volume groups
A volume group identifies a set of volumes that reside at the same physical location. The location can be either the robot in which the volumes reside, standalone storage, or off-site storage if you use the NetBackup Vault option.
When you add media to NetBackup, NetBackup assigns all volumes in a robot to that robot's volume group. Alternatively, you can assign the media to a different group.
Volume groups are convenient for tracking the location of volumes, such as the case when a volume is moved off site. Volume groups let you perform operations on a set of volumes by specifying the group name rather than each individual media ID of each volume. Operations include moves between a robotic library and a standalone location or deletions from NetBackup.
If you move a volume physically, you also must move it logically. A logical move means to change the volume attributes to show the new location.
The following are the rules for assigning volume groups:
All volumes in a group must be the same media type.
However, a media type and its corresponding cleaning media type are allowed in the same volume group (such as DLT and DLT_CLN).
All volumes in a robotic library must belong to a volume group.
You cannot add volumes to a robotic library without specifying a group or having Media Manager generate a name for the group.
The only way to clear a volume group name is to move the volume to standalone and not specify a volume group.
More than one volume group can share the same location.
For example, a robotic library can contain volumes from more than one volume group and you can have more than one standalone volume group.
All volumes in a group must be in the same robotic library or be standalone.
That is, you cannot add a group (or part of a group) to a robotic library if it already exists in another robotic library.
Examples of volume group usage are available.
Examples of volume group usage are available in the NetBackup Administrator's Guide, Volume II.