hi ,Im using SLP policies ( backup to disk -Local Disk then duplicate to tape -IBM TS), recently duplication jobs take a lot more time to complete ( around 10-12 hours for each) when i check Netbackup i can see it will find right media right away and loads it in tape drive very fast but the duplication job will hangs at "Waiting for positioning of Media ID" for about 10 hours.any help here would be apperciated.thanks!NBRB logs attached to this post.Netbackup 7.7Windows Server 2012 R2IBM TS Series LTO-6

Then your problem can be that the SLP is pointing to an old storage unit, there is a technote changing the storage in all versions of an SLP

This sounds like a hardware issue.I have seen something similar where the tape drives (same make/model) had different levels of firmware.Media that was written by newer firmware was later on loaded in a drive with older firmware. The drive with older firmware was battling to position the media and eventually fail with 'media position error'. Can you confirm firmware levels on tape drives?How old are the tapes? Can you see different behaviour between old (reused) tapes and new media? By the time you see 'waiting for positioning' bptm process on the media server is waiting for tape drive to position and report back success.We need bptm log to see why positioning is taking so long and not produce an error much earlier. bptm log on the media server should be at fairly high logging level - 3 at a minimum. Level 5 will probably be best. Ensure that you also have VERBOSE entry in vm.conf on the media server.Restart Device Management service after adding this entry.Hardware issues will now be logged to Event Viewer System and Application logs.

LCM_servernbsrv01-hcart2-robot-tld-0 is the SLP name for storage unit servernbsrv01-hcart2-robot-tld-0Is your SLP pointing at servernbsrv01-hcart2-robot-tld-0 ?

That indicates that the old SLP still contains images with incomplete status.As you have different media types, you should have different densities for both tapes and tape drives.For exampleHCART2 for LTO5 media and tape drivesHCART3 for LTO6 media and tape drivesIf you only have LT06 tape drives, you should configure some as HCART2 to match the LTO5 media in this setup

If you follow bptm PID 16808 through 111616 log file, you will see that 'waiting for position' happened over here: 10:54:58.539 [16808.18000] <2> ... INF - Waiting for positioning of media id 1005L6 Although nothing is mentioned in Activity Monitor, media got positioned over here: 10:55:45.059 [16808.18000] <2> io_position_for_write: locate block is done Started writing copy 2 over here (6 seconds later): 10:55:51.512 [16808.18000] <4> write_backup: begin writing backup id ....., copy 2, fragment 1, to media id 1005L6 on drive IBM.ULT3580-HH6.001 Fragment 1 finished writing at 11:04 at 50MB/sec: 11:04:04.175 [16808.18000] <4> write_backup: successfully wrote backup id ... copy 2, fragment 1, 24445401 Kbytes at 50141.224 Kbytes/sec Keep following same PID through the file and you will see more and more images being written - next one completes at 11:19 at 60MB/sec. This bptm duplication completes successfully at 11:26:29. As per Activity Monitor as well. So... no evidence here of long wait for tape position. The only problem I see is with older version SLPs still trying to access old STU... Oh! And no hcart3 tape drives available between these timestamps: 11/15/2016 15:26:08 - awaiting resource nbsrv01-hcart3-robot-tld-0. No drives are available. 11/16/2016 10:54:07 - resource @aaaac reserved You need to trace drive usage (e.g. vmoprcmd and nbrbutil -dump) when you see the 'No drives are available ' message.

Slow SLP Duplication Jobs

Marianne
Level 6
9 years ago
This sounds like a hardware issue.
I have seen something similar where the tape drives (same make/model) had different levels of firmware.
Media that was written by newer firmware was later on loaded in a drive with older firmware.
The drive with older firmware was battling to position the media and eventually fail with 'media position error'.

Can you confirm firmware levels on tape drives?
How old are the tapes? Can you see different behaviour between old (reused) tapes and new media?

By the time you see 'waiting for positioning' bptm process on the media server is waiting for tape drive to position and report back success.
We need bptm log to see why positioning is taking so long and not produce an error much earlier.

bptm log on the media server should be at fairly high logging level - 3 at a minimum. Level 5 will probably be best.

Ensure that you also have VERBOSE entry in vm.conf on the media server.
Restart Device Management service after adding this entry.
Hardware issues will now be logged to Event Viewer System and Application logs.
- mgmasterv2
  Level 6
  9 years ago
  thanks for your prompt reply.
  actually this is possible because Library came with one drive and after a couple of months i added an aditional drive to it.
  but backup to tape works fine it's just duplication jobs that have this problem.
  vxlog-o.txt3.5 MB
  - Michael_G_Ander
    Level 6
    9 years ago
    If I remember correct 10 hours is a default timeout for tape operations.
    Normally I would have guessed on changed tape device files order, but then the backups shouldn't work either
    Have you tried to do manual a duplication of images from the disk to tape ?
    Did you change anything on the SLP destination tape storage unit other the number of current drives ?
mgmasterv2
Level 6
9 years ago
and it's happening to all duplicate backups VM - WIndows .... but when i run direct backup to tape everything works fine.