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pt1385's avatar
pt1385
15 years ago
Solved

Drives are getting down frequently

We have netbackup 6.5 quantum tape library px720. whenever we fire a backup job drives started to gets down. I tried to make drive UP manually and clean and reset the drive but its again goes down after few minutes. its not happens with specific drive but randomly drives falls into down state. where as the same drives word for 6-7 days without any problem once you take tape silo and master server reboot.

Where it goes wrong????

can any any one assist??
7.1.x and Earlier
Backup and Recovery
Basics
Monitoring
NetBackup
Troubleshooting
  • Marianne's avatar
    Marianne
    15 years ago

    Which O/S?
    If Windows, check Event Viewer System and Application log for errors. If Unix, device errors will go to syslog.

    Use the 'Media Logs' report in NetBackup to check for media and device errors. Filter the report to exclude 'Info' under Severity. Look at the Warning and Error messages.

    Also have a look at this TechNote: http://seer.entsupport.symantec.com/docs/336503.htm

  • Taqadus_Rehman's avatar
    Taqadus_Rehman
    Level 6
    15 years ago

    You need to check Serial Number, Drive Names and Path discrepancies, a quick way to do this is:

    tpautoconf -report_disc

    This will tell you if anything is not matching, this is like running:
    tpconfig -l
    tpautoconf -t
    vmglob -listall -java

    You need to match those 3 things first, if there is any missmatch, you will need to update or remove/readd the drive.

    2. Confirm the HBA's can see the drives, quick way to do this is pinging the drive

    tpconfig -dev_ping -drive -path <path>

    If there is no SCSI response than you have a comunication problem between media server and drive, try reseting the HBA's and rescaning all the devices at OS level.

    3. Check the media server can see the robot host controler, any comunication issue with this box your drives will go on AVR or PEND status and eventualy will go down.  Quick way to check this is healthy get in to the RHC and run robtest to confirm everything is ok with the library.

    there are many other tests, but this are the most common issues.
    Hope this helps.
     

  • Marianne's avatar
    Marianne
    Level 6
    15 years ago

    Which O/S?
    If Windows, check Event Viewer System and Application log for errors. If Unix, device errors will go to syslog.

    Use the 'Media Logs' report in NetBackup to check for media and device errors. Filter the report to exclude 'Info' under Severity. Look at the Warning and Error messages.

    Also have a look at this TechNote: http://seer.entsupport.symantec.com/docs/336503.htm

  • Giroevolver's avatar
    Giroevolver
    Level 6
    15 years ago
    I had a similar issue to this with a few of the tapes having the write protector switch enabled on them. This caused the drive to down when trying to write to those tapes and the tapes forced to frozen.

    Also I had another issue with the inventory of the tapes and the media server didnt realise there was a tape in a slot it was trying to unload the tape to.

    I would try and reboot the library so it does a full inventory. Once thats complete run and inventory in Netbackup and see if it picks up any changes.

    Also double check there is not a tape stuck in the drive or any dirve fault lights!
  • Andy_Welburn's avatar
    Andy_Welburn
    Level 6
    15 years ago
    Correct device config is a must.

    The T/N Marianne quoted is a good place to start & have a close look at any or all error logs, job details etc etc to tie down exactly where the issue is.

    Some of the pointers Giroevolver mentions have also caught us out - again check the logs to tie down media. Inventory & update also - if you manually load tapes without doing this then NetBackup does not know where the tapes are & there is also the possibility of loading a tape into a slot that isn't effectively empty (i.e. loaded in a drive)

    Another possible place to check for errors: /usr/openv/netbackup/db/media/errors
  • David_McMullin's avatar
    David_McMullin
    Level 6
    15 years ago

    We had an operator that would load tapes upside down in our robot, and the stupid thing could read the bar codes without realizing they were upside down. Amazingly enough, you cannot load the tape upside down in the drive....


  • Anonymous's avatar
    Anonymous
    15 years ago
    Remembered this one.
    http://seer.entsupport.symantec.com/docs/331536.htm
  • M-NYC's avatar
    M-NYC
    Level 3
    15 years ago

    I'm not sure if you ever said what OS it is but if you are running Windows you need to make sure Windows is not trying to control the Libraries... I'm running a Quantum px500 and the first thing Quantum had me do was to make sure "Removable Storage" was disabled in Computer Management.

     Hope this helps