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Alistairc's avatar
Alistairc
Level 3
14 years ago

BackupExec 2010 dropping tape drive offline

Hi,
This is a new topic to re-open the issue discussed here:

https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/forums/tape-drive-goes-offline-second-backup

Just to recap on the issue itself:



Running BE2010 Trial on Windows Server 2008 R2 x64.  Hardware is Dell R710 rack server, connected to a HP Ultrium 1760 LTO4 SAS drive via a Dell PERC 6/E SAS Adaptor card.

This is what’s happening:

  1. Setup and run a backup job with full verify.  I’ve tested up to a 250GB job and it completes fine the first time around.
  2. After completion of first job, rerun the same backup job (after tweaking the media overwrite/append etc settings)
  3. The job immediately fails, reporting the drive as offline – cannot bring drive back online using BackupExec administrator
  4. Close BackupExec administrator, restart BackupExec Device/Media service (which also restarts associated service dependencies).
  5. Re-open BackupExec administrator - drive appears to be online again, ready for another job to be kicked off.

 
I’ve completely replaced:

  • Numerous LTO tapes
  • The Dell SAS adaptor that connects the Dell server to the HP rack chassis
  • The HP Rack chassis that houses the 1U internal HP LTO4 Ultrium 1760 SAS drive, SAS adaptor board and all
  • The internal HP LTO Ultrium 1760 drive itself

 
We’ve verified that all above component drivers and firmware are fully up to date.  This problem occurs with both Symantec Tape Drive drivers and HP's official LTO4 tape drivers,
 
To me, the following facts suggest that the problem lies with BackupExec itself:

  1. After the drive goes offline, a simple restart of the BackupExec services seems to bring it back online again
  2. If the drive goes offline, and I stop the BackupExec Device/Media service, I can still access the drive using HP LTT utility, and HP Data Protector Express – only BackupExec detects the drive as offline.
  3. We’ve replaced all possible hardware components and the problem still remains
  4. This problem only ever occurs with BE, I'm testing with HP Data Proctector Express and MS's Data Protection Manager - all work fine.

Luckily, I haven't bought a license for BackupExec yet, however this means I doubt Symantec Support will be willing to spend too much time on it, so I might be forced to go with MS's Data Protection Manager instead if I can't get a resolution soon.

Has anyone seen/resolved this issue before?


Alistair
2010
Backup and Recovery
Backup Exec
Backup Exec Infrastructure Manager
Dell
Drivers
Windows
  • Larry_Fine's avatar
    Larry_Fine
    14 years ago

    re: Running BE2010 Trial on Windows Server 2008 R2 x64.  Hardware is Dell R710 rack server, connected to a HP Ultrium 1760 LTO4 SAS drive via a Dell PERC 6/E SAS Adaptor card.

    I believe the problem is the RAID HBA card and is unsupported for tape.  Sorry I didn't spot that sooner.
    http://seer.entsupport.symantec.com/docs/325573.htm
    http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/stor-sys/matrix/PVMatrix/serveran.htm

    Do you have another SAS HBA to test with?

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  • CraigV's avatar
    CraigV
    Moderator
    14 years ago
    Mmm...OK, so you say the drive goes offline after making certain tweaks? What settings work, and what settings make it go offline?
    Also, are the DP services stopped when you're doing your backups?
  • Alistairc's avatar
    Alistairc
    Level 3
    14 years ago
    The only tweaks I'm making are changing the Device/Media tab from Overwrite mode to Append to tape or overwrite if no appendable media is present.  Even if I keep it on overwrite both times and kick off an the job in its identical state, the second job always fails.  Yep, all other non-Symantec backup servers are stopped, this problem was occurring well before HP DPE and Microsoft DPM were installed.

    Thanks,
    Alistair
  • Larry_Fine's avatar
    Larry_Fine
    Level 6
    14 years ago

    WHY is BE taking the drive offline?  Do you get any errors or alerts?  Anything int he Windows event logs?  anything in the adamm.log file (in the BE folder)?
  • CraigV's avatar
    CraigV
    Moderator
    14 years ago
    Mmm...OK, then look at getting hold of firmware updates through LTT and verifying that it sees no errors on the tape drive.
  • AndyBNZ's avatar
    AndyBNZ
    Level 3
    14 years ago
    I'm having this exact problem.  Was fine for two weeks, now after every succesfull backup the tape drive goes offline.  It's not a new backup job that kicks it as if you run an inventory it's not available.  Simply putting it back online is enough to get it working.  Running an inventory does not make it go offline, only a backup.

    LTO2 connected via iSCSI using starwind.  iSCSI connection is all good, server never ever loses tape drive from hardware, it's just BE 2010 that loses it.  The only error is that the tape drive is unavailable and the job fails.
  • Alistairc's avatar
    Alistairc
    Level 3
    14 years ago
    Hi Craig,
    I've ran LTT - I'm running latest firmware and no problems are reported on any tests I run.  The tape drive runs fine on all other software suites, the problem only appears with BackupExec.

    Andy - yep that sounds identical to my issue alright, are you running Windows Server 2008 R2?

    Larry - good question indeed! No idea why BackupExec is detecting it as offline.  There are never any errors in the Windows event logs, I'm running another testrun now so will check out the adamm.log file afterwards and update the thread.

    Alistair
  • AndyBNZ's avatar
    AndyBNZ
    Level 3
    14 years ago

    SBS2008 R2.

    OK, update - I applied all the hotfixes last night.  Backup ran without issue and tape ejected.

    I can then run an inventory which is succesful - it reports no media.

    As soon as I put a new tape in it becomes unusable.

    By this I mean if you go to 'devices' tape drive appears online, check hardware manager and it's all good.  Right click and it is 'enabled and online'. Run an inventory and it fails with 'drive hardware is offline' 

    I then right click it, put it back online and inventory and hardware will run.

    SO it appears to be a problem with it reading the new tape perhaps...

  • CraigV's avatar
    CraigV
    Moderator
    14 years ago
    You guys are using HP tapes correct? The reason why I ask is that we shipped IBM tapes to 1 of our sites in Asia for use in an HP StorageWorks 1/8 G1 autoloader. Each time we tried to use those tapes, it took the drive offline. Put an HP tape in, and it worked well!
    Also make sure you don't have bar code rules enabled...if you don't have bar code labels, it can cause issues.
  • Alistairc's avatar
    Alistairc
    Level 3
    14 years ago
    Craig, yep I'm using official HP LTO4 media, and don't have any bar code rules enabled anywhere.  I've upgraded to 2010 R2 in the hope that magically resolves the issue - no luck I'm afraid.

    Andy - I don't think it's solely a new tape thing, try running a second backup job using the same tape without ejecting after the initial run - the drive will go probably go offline?

    I've ran some further testing - I can run as many drive inventories (immediately after one another) as I like without failure.  However, after any backup, restore, or even catalog job has completed, the next job which utilises the drive in any way (be it inventory, restore, or backup, etc) will attempt to start, but immediately detect the drive as offline and fail.

    Andy, can you confirm you can definitely get BE to operate again after forcing the drive online in BackupExec Admin Console?  Even if I force the drive online here after failure, it doesn't actually become usuable again until I restart the BackupExec services.

    The fact this is only occurs after job types that require 'long' media transport operations (rewind/fastforward/long read/long write etc), might suggest that something is detecting some sort of timeout on the SAS interface...?

  • Larry_Fine's avatar
    Larry_Fine
    Level 6
    14 years ago

    Please check the adamm.log file, it should give valuable clues as to WHY the drive is going offline.