BEX2012 with HP MSL2024 1840 LTO-4 / V-79-57344-34036 - An unknown error has occurred.

Hi,

3 things to check out:

1. Check the tapes and see if they're getting excessive Hard Write Errors. If they are, try a backup with a brand-new tape.

2. Stop the BE services, download HP Library & Tape Tools and run device checks against the robotics and the drive. Any issues with them will show up here, and if there are failures, you can log a call with HP around this.

3. Make sure there are no failed/failing HDDs on your VM hosts or the backup server...I've seen prefailure drives cause all sorts of issues.

Thanks!

did check before :

- all tapes are barely used, and none show any excessive errors. Already rotated with some other tapes.

- tape drive statistics don't indicate any problems either

- no signs in HP  SIM of any predictive HD failure

Last night run , without the verify did complete for the first time.

As a test, I launched a new job with a 'verify' as a new job 'after' the backup completes.

Wondering if anyone had tested different BusyRetryCount values in the StorPort settings in the registry ?

And if you had the error,...if you saw changes ?

When I added the BusyRetryCount I saw the backup job failed anywhere between 80-120Gb, will without the entry i didn't get further then around 30Gb.

Increasing to 250, ... it did over 1.3Tb

(from  Article ID: TECH163202)

Problem

Random backup failures when HP StorageWorks Ultrium Tape Drive is connected to a LSI based Host Bus Adapter and Storport driver version installed on the system is later than 5.2.3790.3959, due to Insight Manager Storage Agent timeout if the driver returns SCSI status BUSY and Storport driver retries the command unlimited times

Error

The drive will fail backups randomly with,  "A Device Time Out Error has occurred" . In most cases the tape drive will be discovered properly by the Operating system and will work fine when tested with HP Library and Tape Tools.  The system event logs will not show any data that can be related to a drive or SCSI card HBA failure (Event IDS 7, 9, 11 or 15).

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Enum\SCSI\[device identifier name for the tape LTO-3 tape device]\[numeric device instance id for the LTO-3 tape device]\Device Parameters\

Right Click Device Parameters , click New > Key and rename it as Storport .

Right Click Storport key > New > DWORD and rename it as BusyRetryCount and the value should be set to 250 decimal.

Exit regedit.

Reboot the server.

...you might want to stop the HP Storage agents on the server too and check to see if this solves it. There was a TN released from HP about 4 years ago around this, where the SCSI bus is polled excessively.