Remote Storage Allocates Two Media with the Same Name

When you use the Remote Storage administrative snap-in to view media that Remote Storage allocates, two media may have the same name.

This problem can be caused by the following issues:

• Remote Storage requires a new medium because the other media have been filled to capacity.
• The allocation of media did not work or timed out. This behavior occurs if media are not available in the free pool and an operator cannot supply the medium that is requested within the time-out period (one hour).
• The current job (the list of files to be migrated to secondary storage) spans more than one medium.

If any of these situations occurs, Remote Storage may receive a duplicate name that matches the previously allocated medium when Remote Storage requests a second tape from Removable Storage.

To resolve this problem, rename the media in the Remote Storage snap-in.

Microsoft has confirmed that this is a problem in the Microsoft products that are listed at the beginning of this article.

This issue does not affect the performance of Remote Storage or Removable Storage. Removable Storage keeps track of media by using identifiers that are not displayed in the Remote Storage snap-in. The snap-in displays only a friendly name. However, having two identical friendly names may be confusing.