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.
See the NetBackup Administrator's Guide, Volume II: