Import the data from tape and sequential volumes, written from other IBM Storage Protect servers

Why is it useful?

This feature will help with restoring/retrieving data from the tapes, which may have expired in database and also if the tapes are owned/written by other SP server.

Who will benefit from it?

This feature will help in DR tests, where customer needs to validate the health of the volumes regularly for future retrieve/restore possibilities. Best option for ensuring compliances are met with successful restores/ retrieves. Also This feature will help on restore/retrieves from the tapes of decomm and removed servers. That way customer will not have to mandatorily retain the decomm server with hardware occupied till all retentions are expired.

How should it work?

Attached competitor documentation: https://www.veritas.com/support/en_US/article.100017201

In SP server environment, Requirement is that write protect lock enabled on removable storage.

The Phase 1 import procedure assigns the media to the LM server in the SP server database and reads the media to create a HEADER file in the metadata db for each backup that is found. If the backup image being imported spans media, a Phase 1 import needs to be performed on ALL media before running the Phase 2.  
Note: The Phase 1 option can be referred to as "Metadata Import" in the SP console.

The Phase 2 import procedure reads the media more thoroughly and creates the actual data files in the database. The data file contains a list of all the actual data files contained in the backup image.  

At this point, the image is restorable like the original backup.