Caught this one in Twitter today. A fellow needed to know of a way to list the status of all the tapes on all his DPM Servers.
It makes sense. You need to easily report on what tapes can be pulled, where the data is, which ones are expired.
I’m also not going to be done in just one posting. There’s a lot here but I’ll list the important Cmdlets that pull the data. The rest is a matter of Scripting it into a report
Our first task is pull all the Tape libraries together. That’s done by using a
GET-DPMLibrary –DPMServerName ‘NameOfADPMServer’
You can then pipe that list of tape libraries into
GET-TAPE
which will actually pull a list of all the tapes out for you as well. Now for the tricky part. Finding what’s on the tapes. You have to pipe THAT into a
GET-RECOVERYPOINT
So a simple one liner will dump all the recovery points on TAPE like so
GET-DPMLibrary –DPMServerName ‘NameOfADPMServer’ | GET-TAPE | GET-RECOVERYPOINT
Ok neat, that worked. But it’s not very useful is it? I mean we need to know what TAPE each point is on and it would be a great thing to know which server has that tape. Be even BETTER if we knew the library.
Well that’s doable. We just script it. Instead of just piping in and pooping out what we say (*sorry, I couldn’t resist…. no wait… yes I could…*) We could pull out the blocks of information and break them down.
So first …. let’s store away that list of libraries
$TAPELIBRARIES=GET-DPMLibrary –DPMServerName ‘NameOfADPMServer’
Now we can loop through each library and EXAMINE the tapes and show the contents
Foreach ($TAPELibrary in $TAPELIBRARIES) {
$TAPELIST=$TAPELibrary | GET-TAPE
Then we’ll step through the tapes and show their contents
Foreach ( $TAPE in $TAPELIST ) {
$RP=$TAPE | GET-RECOVERYPOINT
Then you step through each Recovery point for individual details
Foreach ($point in $RP) {
So how is this any better? At this point you now have data that you can’t easily pull out of the pipe. As you “PIPE” information into each Cmdlet, each Cmdlet is only going to pass along information IT is supposed to produce. So in writing a script we can now pull out specific information and build a report from it. Or simply build it into CSV file. There is certain Key useful information from each part we could use for a report.
From $TAPELibraries
UserFriendlyName – Nice name give to describe a particular tape unit
MachineName - We should be able to say which server any of these tapes and drives are on
From $TAPELlist
Barcode – for Easy Identification when removing from a Library
CreationDate – Good to know how old it is
DatasetState – Current or ready for Recycling?
DataWrittenDisplayString – How much is sitting on that tape? How many Gigs/Megs?
IsOffsiteReady – Can we send this for offsite storage?
Location – What slot is the tape sitting it?
From $RP (our Recovery Points)
UserFriendlyName – Very descriptive name of what is on there
Size – How many Bytes is that sucker eating up
So what can we do with this? Build a simple onscreen report like so. Get the data from each line and spit out to the console (Hey, It’s late and I wanna go home, so you can play with it your own way) 
$TAPELIBRARIES=GET-DPMLibrary –DPMServerName ‘NameOfADPMServer’
$FILENAME=’C:\Powershell\DPMTapes.csv’
NEW-ITEM –path $FILENAME –itemtype File –force
$HEADER=’TapeLibrary,ComputerName,TapeLocation,TapeState,Barcode,CreationDate,RecoveryPointName,Size’
ADD-CONTENT –path $FILENAME –value $HEADER
Foreach ($TAPELibrary in $TAPELIBRARIES) {
$TLUFN=$TAPELibrary.UserFriendlyName
$TLMN=$TAPELibrary.Machinename
$TAPELIST=$TAPELibrary | GET-TAPE
Foreach ( $TAPE in $TAPELIST ) {
$TapeLocation=$Tape.Location
$TapeState=$Tape.DataSetState
$TapeBarcode=$Tape.Barcode
$TapeDate=$Tape.CreationDate
$RP=$TAPE | GET-RECOVERYPOINT
Foreach ($point in $RP) {
$RPUFN=$Point.UserFriendlyName
$RPSize=$Point.Size
$OUTPUT=$TLUFN+’,’+$TLMN+’,’+$Tapelocation+’,’+$TapeState+’,’+$TapeBarcode+’,’+$Tapedate+’,’+$RPUFN+’,’+$RPSize
ADD-CONTENT –path $FILENAME –value $OUTPUT
}
}
}
Yes…. I agree the script is horribly written and even worse for formatting 
Yes we should have filtered too and made it nicer.
But now that you have this, you can tweak it away. Add your own information. Since it’s a CSV file, this can be played with in Excel, or just use a SEND-MAILMESSAGE after mining.
The Power is yours and the Power of Shell is in YOU
Sean
the Energized Tech
