How to rename a pool under NetWorker

Once a NetWorker resource has been assigned a certain name, it can not be changed any more. This actually is nothing else but a precaution with NetWorker - it shall suppress potential problems which might occur due to other dependencies.

To rename a resource, you actually have to create a new resource with the same parameters and then delete the old one.

Unfortunately, this does not work with NetWorker pools. As pools define to which set of media the data shall be saved, it is mandatory that each pool must have different data selection criteria assigned to it.

NOTE: NetWorker will not allow you to create another pool with the same or overlapping criteria.

So the $64,000 question is...

How do you rename a pool, if necessary ?

Procedure

The following procedure will work although it is not really recommended if you have a lot of active media assigned to that pool already:

  1. Create a new pool with the name of your choice
    • Assign the same criteria (from the old pool) to it,
    • assign a dummy criteria as well (so that it will be a different pool)
    • Save the pool resource
  2. Remove all media of the original pool from the media index (do NOT relabel them!!!)
  3. Delete the original pool
  4. Delete the dummy criteria from the new pool

Recovering from old pool

If you need to recover from the old tapes you must now rescan them first. To be able to do this old pool has to exist with the same.

However, as you only recover data, the criteria does not matter any more - you may define whatever is necessary to differentiate this pool from your other pools.