Forum Discussion

Colin_North's avatar
Colin_North
Level 6
17 years ago

Frozen Media / TapeAlert warning

Hi Guys,
Nearly every backup evening I am getting frozen tapes, most from one media server and tape drive. My drives are configured with tapealert so I have looked at the media server's application log and can see the following errors:
 
TapeAlert Code: 0x08, Type: Warning, Flag: NOT DATA GRADE, from drive TLD1B (index 0), Media Id xxxxxx
 
I've looked in the NBU 6.0 Media Manager System Guide and found the following which doesn't help much:
0x08 Freeze media - FRZ Warning - WRN NOT DATA GRADE

I also found this old post on this forum, which advises to replace the tapes in question.
 
Has anyone else had this problem? Do I need to replace the tapes? Some of them have very low mounts and have only been written to a handful of times.
 
I'm using NBU 6.0 MP4 on Windows 2003 Server (STD) SP2.
 
Cheers.
 
 
7.1.x and Earlier
Backup and Recovery
NetBackup
  • Andy_Welburn's avatar
    Andy_Welburn
    Level 6
    17 years ago
    Colin

    You say  the tapes have only been mounted a few times, but how old are they?
    We were in a similar position (altho' not quite the same error) & to save much frustration with failed jobs & constantly cleaning tape drives we ended up destroying all tapes older than about 3 years old irrespective of the number of mounts (obviously once the images on them had expired!).

    Regards, Andy
  • Colin_North's avatar
    Colin_North
    Level 6
    17 years ago
    Andy,
    Probably 40% of the tapes are less than 2 years old, and of that 40% there's 10% of them that are new within the last 6 months. They are all LTO2, and a mix of HP and Maxell tapes.
     
    I'm not getting any backup failures, it's not got to that stage yet, as tapealert and Netbackup (by freezing the tapes) is merely giving me a gentle warning.
     
    I think that I am going to have to replace the tapes as and when.
     
    Over the next few months I will be phasing out my LTO2's and will be replacing my libraries/drives/tapes with LTO3.
     
    Colin.
  • Andy_Welburn's avatar
    Andy_Welburn
    Level 6
    17 years ago
    Shouldn't be having issues with tapes just a few months old.
    Maybe there is another issue, some sinister hardware problem on one or two drives.
    Again, we faced something similar & it can be difficult to isolate intermittent h/w issues with several drives whilst also contending with flaky media. Ended up logging every failure in a spreadsheet to look for 'patterns', dumping repeated failure tapes & replacing repeated failure tape drives when they became apparent.
    Now we have got rid of the LTO1s & have been using LTO3s for the past 6 months & have had no issues (fingers-crossed etc) so hopefully your phasing out of the LTO2s should resolve this (for the time being).

    Best regards, Andy.
  • Colin_North's avatar
    Colin_North
    Level 6
    17 years ago
    Andy,
    I reckon it's a hardware related issue with the tape drive, but as I'm getting new LTO3 drives & tapes in a few weeks I cannot be bothered to open a support case with Dell.
     
    Hopefully going to LTO3 will cure this - although the new hardware we are getting is also Dell 8-/
     
    Regards, Colin.
  • cheryl_faulkner's avatar
    cheryl_faulkner
    Level 2
    17 years ago
    Colin,
    NetBackup should only freeze media under a few conditions, one being when it runs into a non-NetBackup format, such as CPIO, MTF, even NetBackup Catalog data (tar), etc.  Maybe some of these tapes could have been used for something else.  If that's the case then they only way you can use these tapes again is if you label them (bplabel).

    Also NetBackup will freeze tapes if there are 3 read/write errors within 12 hours on the same drive.  NetBackup will log these message in the All Log Entires Report which pulls from the ErrorDB (c:\program Files\NetBackup\DB\Error).  A log file is created for each day.  By default all reports will only display 24 hours worth of info.  This is configurable in the Global Host Properities of the Master Server.  If this is the case then changing the drive and/or tapes or even cleaning the drive should help.

    Hope that helps!


  • Zak_Meekins_2's avatar
    Zak_Meekins_2
    Level 6
    17 years ago
    Is the backup server freezing the same tapes over and over or are you getting random tape freezes?


  • Colin_North's avatar
    Colin_North
    Level 6
    17 years ago
    terrifictigger,
    None of these tapes have been used for anything else, so that's not the cause. I'm aware of the 3 errors in 12 hours, and if that had happened I would have expected to see some failed backup jobs with either status 84 / status 14.
     
    I think that there's a hardware issue with one of my tape drives, but thanks for your input anyway.
     
    Colin.
     
  • Colin_North's avatar
    Colin_North
    Level 6
    17 years ago
    Zak,
    I am getting lots of different tapes being frozen, although some are repeat offenders, which would point to there being an issue with these tapes. I've said in a previous post that I think that it's a hardware issue with one of my tape drives, but I don't get this problem every day, so maybe it's not hardware related.
     
    Anyway I have a new library and tape drives hopefully arriving soon so the issue should go away. It just bugs me when I get these errors, I just need to find out what has caused them.
     
    Colin.
  • Colin_North's avatar
    Colin_North
    Level 6
    17 years ago
    Hi Bob,
    Thanks for the link, I already looked at that one, which pointed me in the direction of the tapealert errors.
     
    Colin.