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Theartemis's avatar
Theartemis
Level 3
13 years ago

Backup Verifying state very slow

Hi Everyone,

We are running Backup Exec 12.0 on a Windows Server 2003 server.

Our drive is a IBM ULT3580-TD4 connected to a SAS extension card and the media library is a Dell PowerVault TL2000.

Last week, i stopped the server in order to install windows updates and i took out some of the tape to archive them, i replaced those tapes with brand new HP LTO4 tapes.

Since these two operations, some of the backup verifying operations are very slow (Ex. yesterday 34,8 GB to backup, Backup started at  3:10PM and finished at 3:25PM, verifying started at 3:26 and i had to kill the task at 4:21:33 because it was verifying at 179,00 MB/min)

It seems to be completely random and occurs on both old and new tapes.

I read a lot about this but i didn't find any solutions yet .

Thanks for any proposals :)

Regards,

12.x and Earlier
Backing Up
Backup and Recovery
Backup Exec
  • pkh's avatar
    pkh
    13 years ago

    Numerous read errors could be a sign that the tape drive is failing.  I would suggest that you run the Dell diagnostic utility against the tape drive.  Stop all the BE services before hand and select the write test.

    If your older tapes does not have these read errors, then you probably have a bad batch of tape.  I would suggest that you exchange them for new ones.

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  • Theartemis's avatar
    Theartemis
    Level 3
    13 years ago

    Thanks for your answer.

    I checked this and the Library is shown as a Unknown Medium Changer with a Microsoft driver.

  • CraigV's avatar
    CraigV
    Moderator
    13 years ago

    ...have you perhaps considered restarting the server, and upgrading the firmware on the tape drive along with checking to see if there are updated drivers for BE 12.0?

    You can also download HP LTT and run it against the drive to rule out any possible hardware issues.

     

    Thanks!

  • Joshua_Kane's avatar
    Joshua_Kane
    Level 6
    13 years ago

    Checking on the Hardware Compatibility list for version 12.0 I can see that the Ultrium 3 is tested and supported for use in the TL2000 with both Fibre Channel and SCSI connections.  I do not see any combination of TL2000 listed with an Ultrium 4 drive on the HCL. 

    I would suggest that you check with the Backup Exec HCL to ensure your configuration is supported, and that you also have the latest Service Pack installed, which will also include the latest Device Drivers for the 12.0 product.

     

  • Theartemis's avatar
    Theartemis
    Level 3
    13 years ago

    Thanks for you help, i've restarted the server, i'll keep you in touch.

    Joshua, we are using TL2000 with LTO4 tapes since 2 years and we never had any tape related problems.

    SP5 is installed on BE Server, and the release is 12.0 Rev 1364.

  • pkh's avatar
    pkh
    Moderator
    13 years ago

    You may want to tune your block and buffer sizes.  See my article below

    https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/articles/tuning-my-lto4-tape-drive

  • Theartemis's avatar
    Theartemis
    Level 3
    13 years ago

    Hi

    I'll try this but it happened again this week end with two backups but this time only on the new tapes:

    •  Complete Exchange server :

    12 Hours to backup and verify 96 Go instead of 1 Hour and 30min (Tape is 41LU).

    • The backup server itself :

    6 Hours to backup and verify 73 Go (Tape is 40LU) instead of 1 hour.

    I'm also gonna try to clean the drive, but this is driving me crazy.

    I found something, on 40LU and 41LU, there are 1463 and 3427 soft read errors, then i checked and it seems that long verify time occurs only on new tapes. Did I screwed up something when installing the new tapes ?

  • pkh's avatar
    pkh
    Moderator
    13 years ago

    Numerous read errors could be a sign that the tape drive is failing.  I would suggest that you run the Dell diagnostic utility against the tape drive.  Stop all the BE services before hand and select the write test.

    If your older tapes does not have these read errors, then you probably have a bad batch of tape.  I would suggest that you exchange them for new ones.

  • Theartemis's avatar
    Theartemis
    Level 3
    13 years ago

    I've contacted my supplier and i'm sending back the tapes, the solution was simple... sorry for the trouble.

    Regards,