how does one control the cleaning cartridge

This should work

vmchange -new_mt hcart2_clean -m <media ID of cleaning tape>

If your tape library suppports self-cleaning (auto clean or whatever they might call it), use it.  The hardware knows better when to clean the drives than NetBackup. 

Review library logs to see when/how often the drives are being cleaned, and number of mounts for the cleaning cartridge.

 

Agree with Will - I have an SL8500 Tape Library which is controlled by an ACSLS - NetBackup sees the tapes, I leave them in the NONE pool. As far as NetBackup is concerned, they have never been mounted. All they have is a creation date when they got added.

I turned off ALL cleaning process within NetBackup, the ACSLS and robot take care of everything automagically.

I did have to set up a script to check the cleaning count on the ACSLS server, to notify the operators to remove and load a new one after 50 uses.

Other than that it works nicely.

 

Perhaps if you told us what type of robot or drives you had, we could give you better advice?

 

 

it's an SL500 (hcart2 drives, type is HP Ultrium) wtih 30 slots. i can see the cleaning cartridges mounted, Active, NONE pool, with the clearnings remaining column at 25. however, the number of mounts is still at zero although the creation column was Oct 2015.

how do you turn OFF cleaning process from NBU?

I do NOT recommend turning off cleaning from NBU.  To do this you have to disable TAPE_ALERTS, which disables all TAPE_ALERTS which would mean you may not be alerted to some issue that in the worst case, leads to data loss.

If you run /usr/openv/volmgr/bin/tpclean, this will show if the drives need cleaning, and when they were last cleaned.

If the environment (data center) is very clean, it is quite possible that the drives need cleaning vaer rarely.  The majority of debris in drives, comes from the air.

 

Where is robot control for SL500? ACSLS or TLD? For ACSLS the cleaning should be done by ACSLS. For TLD, my vote is NBU.

robot control? when i go to Devices/Robots, it says "TLD".

i ran that "./tpclean" command and here is the output:

[root@nbu bin]# ./tpclean
Drv    Type      Mount Time  Frequency   Last Cleaned      Comment
***     ****       **********       *********       ****************     *******
  0    hcart2*   1387.5      0                N/A
  1    hcart2*   1441.3      0                N/A

 

seems it's not being used if i'm reading that frequency column right.

So, is the robot set to do the cleaning then ?

If not, then it would appear that the drives don't need cleaning (you would see 'needs cleaning' or similar alongside a drive in tpclean output)

Providing the cleaning tapes are labelled correctly, are in the NONE volume pool and have thesame density oas the drives, but with _clean after (eg hcart_clean) then if required, it should work.

Are cleaning tapes in 'normal' slots used for backup tapes or in dedicated maintenance slots in the robot?
'normal' slots means NBU should do the cleaning and media should be configured correctly in NBU (as per Martin's post above).
Dedicated maintenance slots means NBU is unaware of the cleaning tapes and the robot is responsible for cleaning.

If the cleaning tapes are configured in NBU, show us output for one them:

/usr/openv/volmgr/bin/vmquery -m <media-id>

from ./tpclean output I think your cleaning is done by the Tape Library itself.

Go to Tape Library web console/interface and in Drive Operations menu you should find the Tape Drive Clean option, if you want to do the cleaning manually

I have Quantum one and just need to export once Cleaning Tape is expired (50 Mounts) & Import a New cleaning Tape, cleaning is managed by Library.

Check for : Operations => Cleaning Media => Import/Export (This is Quantum Tape Library Web interface & yours should be similar)

By the way, I have HP LTO5 Tape Drives.