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jfkana's avatar
jfkana
Level 4
12 years ago

Backup Exec 2012 Tape drive Issues

Hi folks, we're using BUE2012 in our production and test environments, in our test environment, we keep running into the same issue again, and again, and again. We never had this problem previously and cannot determine what the cause is!

We have BUE2012 running with an IBM LTO4 Tape drive, an Ultrium -TD4. We are using the Symantec drivers and the drive is up to date on firmware.

We CANNOT for love, nor money, perform a successful catalog operation on a tape. for example:

Following a TN and other advice on this website, we removed the Catalogs folder and using 2 of our full backup tapes, we tried to inventory and catalog the tapes to preform a test restore. The tapes wouldn't catalog. At some point during the operation the Drive would be marked as offline. If you onlined it, it'd offline itself again. rinse Repeat.

This machine is used for nothing else, BUE is the only program that would be commanding the drive. Initially it happened when you tried ANYTHING tape related. We then discovered the Symantec drivers were not being used - installed those, removed the old catalogs incase they were corrupt and got 2 fresh full backup tapes to catalog and try a restore. No luck.

One tape finished that contained ~500GB of data but the full tape stopped after 1300GB/1600GB - a frustrating waste of 3 hours!

 

 

2012
Backup and Recovery
Backup Exec

18 Replies

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  • CraigV's avatar
    CraigV
    Moderator
    12 years ago

    Hi,

     

    IBM should have a tape utility you can download and run diagnostics against the drive. Do so ane make sure the device does a successful self-test and doesn't show any issues.

    Does BE 2012 have SP1a installed along with any subsequent patches? Have you tried to repair the BEDB using BEutility.exe and/or installation of BE?

    Thanks!

  • jfkana's avatar
    jfkana
    Level 4
    12 years ago

    The drive itself works just fine, i've been able to make restores using it previously. I will of course run the diags to be sure.

    BUE2012 has SP1a and all hot fixes LU would detect and install. I've currently reinstalled BUE2012 to start over totally fresh, likea  true bare metal scenario where it would just be installed, no database info, no catalogs, no prior information!

    Hopefully it runs the cat job okay.

  • CraigV's avatar
    CraigV
    Moderator
    12 years ago

    ...and the tapes don't have excessive Hard Write Errors? No Removable Storage service involved from a Windows-perspective?

  • jfkana's avatar
    jfkana
    Level 4
    12 years ago

    Zero hard errors of any description! No removeable storage to the best of my knowledge. Best method of double checking this?

  • Kiran_Bandi's avatar
    Kiran_Bandi
    Level 6
    12 years ago

    Which OS is running on media server?

    Incase of windows 2K3, check under services for Removable Storage Manager service, stop and disable it if it is running.

    If 2K8, forget about it. RSM service doesn't exist. And the diagnostic tool for IBM devices is ITDT. You can get it from here: http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=ssg1S4000662

  • jfkana's avatar
    jfkana
    Level 4
    12 years ago

    OS is 2k8R2. I reinistalled BUE from fresh there, it got through one tape and then as soon as i tried to inventory and cat the 2nd tape it immediately offlined the drive.

    I removed the drive + uninstalled drivers through Device Manager, rebooted the server, installed the symantec tape drivers through the tape install wizard on 2012. Rebooted again to make sure evrything was ok.

    Currently catting the other tape in the set, this tape contains a full 1.6TB of information so it's expected to take a short while. Last run, this got to approx 1.3TB before the drive offlined itself and stopped.

  • jfkana's avatar
    jfkana
    Level 4
    12 years ago

    Only what I can see in BUE anyway - the drive is offline check all the cables etc.

     

    It just happened again - another 3 and a half hours gone! The job is still running[queued] so it didn't fail out right but the drive just went offline without warning after about 3 and a bit hours, after processing 1296GB/1600 (approx)

     

    Really at wits end about this. It finished one tape of about 800 gig no problem, neither tapes have any hard or soft errors. Nothing strange or abnormal seemed to happen. It was a fresh install of BUE so there was no DB, no Cats, nothing. It was a fresh, bare metal restore scenario.

    I'm not exactly asking for something off-menu, just to catalog and restore something-anything from the tape...

  • Larry_Fine's avatar
    Larry_Fine
    Level 6
    12 years ago

    When a device is taken off-line, information is placed in the adamm.log file about what was happening with the device at that time.  Can you check the tail of your adamm.log file for any SCSI events.  Feel free to post your adamm.log file here and we will try and help decipher it.

  • jfkana's avatar
    jfkana
    Level 4
    12 years ago

     

    ------------------------ -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
     
    [3428] 02/13/13 10:24:32.828 DeviceIo: 04:00:17:00 - Device error 1117 on "\\.\Tape0", SCSI cmd b5, 4 total errors
    [1508] 02/13/13 13:32:41.375 DeviceIo: 04:00:17:00 - Device error 1117 on "\\.\Tape0", SCSI cmd b5, 6 total errors
    [1508] 02/13/13 13:32:46.532 PvlDrive::DisableAccess() - ReserveDevice failed, offline device
           Drive = 1002 "Tape drive 0001"
           ERROR = 0x0000001F (ERROR_GEN_FAILURE)
     
    [1508] 02/13/13 13:32:46.597 PvlDrive::UpdateOnlineState()
           Drive = 1002 "Tape drive 0001"
           ERROR = The device is offline!
     
     
    -----------------------------------------------
     
    This is what appears is the adamm.log for the job, it then has a huge dump of the SCSI history.
     
    http://pastebin.com/fyNP5M6j Is the link to the full dump from when the job fails.