Automount tape in standalone drive

So, if I understand correctly - you have inserted a tape in the drive but NBU is not recognising it?

Is this a new tape (never used before) or a previously used tape that you want to append to or overwrite?
If new - have you added the Media ID in the Media section of the GUI, add it to the correct pool and label it (bplabel)?

Is Device Monitor promting for another media-id than the one that you have inserted? To prevent NBU from prompting for previously used media, you can suspend media when ejecting it.

Next time you change a tape, please verify that NBU is recognising the media and reading the internal label:

Unix: /usr/openv/volmgr/bin/vmoprcmd -d
Windows: <install-path>\veritas\volmgr\bin\vmoprcmd -d

It is important to understand how NBU is using/selecting media in Standalone drives:

http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH31177

If the tape has been used before it will have a physical header written to the tape which NetBackup should recognise when it is inserted.

If you have not used the tape before (brand new) then just label it first.

If you run the bplabel command from a command line you will see it appears to hang.

If you go to the admin console under Device Monitor you will see a pending request at the bottom of the screen. Drag this and drop it onto the tape drive.

This will label the tape physically with its Media ID and the bplabel command will complete.

Do this for all new tapes.

Once a tape has been used once it should show up automatically next time it is inserted

Dont forget to give it a couple of minutes after inserting a tape for NetBackup to read it and do a refresh in activity monitor to see if it has been picked up.

Hope this helps

To me it seems it wont try to read the tape when I insert a new (previously used) tape

If I insert a tape say the Daily tape and I do refresh on the standalone tape in the Device Monitor it waits and thinks abit and then it display the previous tape not the new tape.

Next day (because the backups failed) I got status 96 on the policies because it couldn't find any media.

If I just do a restart job it will tell me there is a pending action.I just go to the device Monitor and refresh and do Assign Request and the backup starts just fine.

btw, the standalone tape drive sits on a media server not on the master.

When running the command below, it is LTD002 in the drive,

I used that tape yesterday just fine (LTD002).

ipndadm1 % /usr/openv/volmgr/bin/vmoprcmd -d

                                PENDING REQUESTS

                                     <NONE>

                                  DRIVE STATUS

Drv Type   Control  User      Label  RecMID  ExtMID  Ready   Wr.Enbl.  ReqId
  0 hcart    AVR               Yes   LTW001           Yes     Yes        0

                             ADDITIONAL DRIVE STATUS

Drv DriveName            Shared    Assigned        Comment
  0 HP.ULTRIUM4-SCSI.000  No       -
ipndadm1 %

 

Nope - not LTD002 in the drive.

The header on the tape (internal label) that is currently in the drive is LTW001.

Do you manually label new tapes before using it? Do you also write this media-id on the paper-label on the tape?

Best to insert all your used tapes one-by-one in the drive, check what the internal label is (using vmoprcmd) and check that the external label matches the internal label.

Same thing happened,

Backups didn't start the LTD002 IS in the drive.

If I do restart job on the nightly failed ones I just go to the device Monitor and refresh and do Assign Request and the backup starts just fine.

This tape is written to and labeled correctly, it was used on Monday.

So, if I change tape, Netbackup should read the label and if it is valid it should assign it?

For some reason that doesn't seem to happen here.

/usr/openv/volmgr/bin/vmoprcmd -d
will not tell me what tape is in the drive

I will do some more testing today, when backup finishes.

Hi

Just a thought - what O/S is the media server that this drive is attached to?

I am assuming it is a Unix O/S from your command line but if that is just run from the Master and the Media Server is actually Windows ensure that removable storage service is stopped and disabled otherwise Windows will be interferring with the drive.

Other than that i can aonly assume you have a settiong or a touch file in place somewhere causing this - media unmount delay or something on the Master or Media Server media section under Host Properties

You have not mentioned you OS or NBU version?

It seems that you might have discovered a bug in AVRD (the process that reads and reports the internal label).

 

Sounds similar to this problem: https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/forums/loading-unloading-tape-standalone-drive-netbackup-71

There was a similar bug that was fixed way back in V6.0 MP5, that actually had a registry workaround so dont know if it is worth trying it:

http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH48261

Some more tests...

All Solaris 10, running NBU 7.1.0.2

It seems that if I put in a new tape and label it, say LTD003, I can see that tape and vmoprcmd reports correct label.

If I then change tape to say LTW001 it correctly changes the tape displayed in Device Manager.

If I change back to the LTD003 tape, it doesn't change.

If I run a backup on LTD003 I have to do the assign request in the Device Manager.

After this the tape gets correctly assign automatically.

To me it seems that I have to start a real backup on the tape before it could mount it automatically.
Label it is not enough.

If this is a bug or feature i don't know.