About WORM media
You can use WORM (Write-Once-Read-Many) media to protect key data from unwanted modification or to meet compliance regulations.
NetBackup uses the QIC/WORM tape format for WORM media. This format lets NetBackup append images to WORM tape.
For more information about "Media formats", see the NetBackup Administrator's Guide, Volume II.
Tape error recovery is disabled for WORM media. NetBackup has job resume logic, which tries to resume a job that has been interrupted (such as an interruption on the Fibre Channel). However, NetBackup fails a job that uses WORM media and then retries the failed job. It is recommended that you use checkpoint and restart for backups.
The bplabel command labels only LTO-3 WORM tapes. All other WORM media cannot be labeled because the label cannot be overwritten when the media is used.
The following are the limitations for WORM tape:
Third-party copy backups are not supported with WORM media.
NetBackup does not support resume logic with WORM tape. NetBackup fails a job that uses WORM media and then retries the failed job. Alternatively, if checkpoint and restart are used, NetBackup restarts the job from the last checkpoint. It is recommended that you use checkpoint and restart for backups.
NetBackup provides two methods to manage WORM media, as follows:
Assign a reserved prefix to WORM volume pool names.
A WORM volume name cannot contain a period (.).
Assign a specific drive type to all WORM drives and a specific media type to all WORM media.
See About using unique drive and media types to manage WORM media.