Tape Drive/Library Firmware upgrade- Requires NBU/LTID restart ?

A brief about NBU environment:-

Master Server (Clustered) : Win2008 R2 64-bit

2 Media Servers (LDOMS): Solaris 11

Tape Library: SL150 with 8 LTO-6 tape drives.

Since the library will be power-cycled for the upgrade, it means downtime on the hardware.

For this reason I would recommend to stop NBU on media servers as well to prevent NBU probing for devices while maintenance is in progress.

Run scan after library maintenance to ensure OS and NBU still sees devices fine before starting NBU again.

Not a requirement - just precaution.

Thanks everyone for your suggestions.

Definately, we have it in our plan to stop NBPEM and suspend/cancel any active/queued running backup jobs, clearing all NBRB allocations and freeing up tape drives by moving tapes to slots before proceeding with this activity. Also, we would be resuming the NBPEM once done with the upgrade.

So, if I understand this correctly, though its not necessary to STOP/START netbackup for tape drive firmware upgrade activity, it's always good to have.

correct... and agreed with Marianne and Nicolai :-)

You may also want/need to update your device mappings file for NetBackup - see the compatibility list:

https://support.symantec.com/en_US/article.TECH59978.html

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FYI - sometimes, after a firmware patch, the library and/or drives appear (to NetBackup) to have different identification strings/names, and so... sometimes, either:

a) You don't have to anything else

b) You need to update device mappings, AND restart NBU device services.

c) Update device configuration (e.g. re-run discovery wizard), AND restart NBU device services.

d) Update device mappings AND update device configuration (e.g. re-run discovery wizard), AND restart NBU device services.

e) And sometimes, the new 'device name strings' of the firrmware patched library and/or firmware patched tape drives, is so new... that they are not listed in the currently issued (by Symantec) device mappings filr for NetBackup - and so you have to open a support case to get an engineer help you 'manually tweak' a device mappings file so that NetBackup can once again recognise the devices.

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No-one can tell you which of these you may, or may not, have to do - or what will happen after your firmware patch - without experiance of exactly your configuration nor without deeply/closely investigating the differences between your version of currently installed device mappings file and the currently available for downaload version - and/or the release notes for the firmware updates for both library and drives.

Me I would down one drive, upgrade it, test backups and restores.

That way youve tested the drive FW in a single change, thats the only change hence proves the new FW.

I would then do each drive in single thread if I had the need to maintain functionality.

Lastly I'd do the robotics. Overall this would give you least downtime. Jim

See my HOWTO article from couple of years ago with detailed process and command lines.

Should be still relevant today - 7.6 era.

HOWTO - Update tape library firmware with minimal impact on NetBackup 6.5, 7.0, 7.1