Forum Discussion

ipmanyak's avatar
ipmanyak
Level 5
9 years ago

Trouble with tape drive

Hello.

I have standalone tape drive ( not a library) HP StorageWorks LTO-5 Ultrium 3280  SAS.

For the last 7 days it requested the cleaning cartridge of 5 times.

This tape drive  works more than 5 years and writes on a tape for 15 hours every day.

What happened?   

The resource of head  ended? Or a head so strongly became soiled that the cleaning cartridge helps not for a long time?

1. What to do ? 

My backups can't successfully finished.

2. I have another  standalone tape drive ( not a library) HP StorageWorks LTO-5 Ultrium 3000 SAS.

Now it isn't connected to my server.

How to step by step to enter this device into operation and to reassign all tape pools on it?

 

Software  Symantec Netbackup Enrerpise version 7.5.0.6 ( Windows 2003 )

 

7.5
Backup and Recovery
NetBackup
Tip-How to
Troubleshooting
Windows Server (2003-2008)
  • StefanosM's avatar
    StefanosM
    9 years ago

    if a tape drive starts to ask for cleaning tape again and again, or the drive has a problem or there is a problematic tape.

    If the previous days the same tape was used, change the tape as first troubleshooting step. It is better to test the drive with a new tape.

    if you need to change the tape drive, do the following.

    • write down the density of the faulty drive (hcart or hcart2 or hcart3)
    • delete the old tape drive from netbackup, and disconnect it from the server
    • connect the new drive to the server and check that it is viewable from the OS. (install driver if required)
    • run the device installation wizard from the netbackup GUI and configure the drive to netbackup
    • check the density of the new drive and, if need it, correct the density to match the density of the faulty drive ( from media and device management -> devices -> drives, right click and select properties).
    • no other steps needed. Run a backup to test the drive.
  • sdo's avatar
    sdo
    9 years ago

    With standalone tape drives you do not have to mount the tape that is requested, instead you can load any tape wihich is writeable - i.e. any tape in the same pool as being requested, of the same retention (assuming mixed retentions is not enabled), which still has space, which is not write-locked - or instead is a scratch tape from the ScratchPool.

    If you want A00006 to cease being requested, then just delete volume A00006, or create a new pool named 'BadMedia' and manually assign A00006 to the 'BadMedia' pool.

  • sdo's avatar
    sdo
    Moderator
    9 years ago

    Top tips by a top admin.   Good working practices you have.    :)

  • Greek-God's avatar
    Greek-God
    Level 3
    9 years ago

    Please follow the technote mentioned below to replace the tape device , It might help - 

    How to update NetBackup for a replaced tape drive without deleting and re-adding the drive - https://support.symantec.com/en_US/article.TECH34296.html 

    https://support.symantec.com/en_US/article.TECH94243.html

     

     

  • ipmanyak's avatar
    ipmanyak
    Level 5
    9 years ago
    StefanosM   I tried deep cleaning. Didn't help.
    Yesterday I remove  my old tape drive  Ultrium 3280  and connect new  Ultrium 3000 SAS. 
    Test job run and wrote to the tape successfully, but the job requested not the first active tape from the list of the active tapes, A00028 was requested.  Now by the command:   available_media.cmd > #availablemedia.txt in this list I have:
     

    NetBackup pool                                                               
                                                                                 
    A00006    HCART2   NONE      -      -     -     -     -    AVAILABLE    
    A00021    HCART2   NONE      -      -     -     -     -    AVAILABLE    
    A00022    HCART2   NONE      -      -     -     -     -    AVAILABLE    
    A00023    HCART2   NONE      -      -     -     -     -    AVAILABLE    
    A00024    HCART2   NONE      -      -     -     -     -    AVAILABLE    
    A00025    HCART2   NONE      -      -     -     -     -    AVAILABLE    
    A00026    HCART2   NONE      -      -     -     -     -    AVAILABLE    
    A00027    HCART2   NONE      -      -     -     -     -    AVAILABLE    
    A00028    HCART2   NONE      -      -     -     -     -    AVAILABLE    
    A00029    HCART2   NONE      -      -     -     -     -    AVAILABLE    
    A00030    HCART2   NONE      -      -     -     -     -    AVAILABLE    

    ....

    I cannot freeze or suspend tape with label A00006 coz it has not  information.

    How to resort and assign a tape with label A00021, A000022 ...  for the next jobs with  SLP .

     

     

  • sdo's avatar
    sdo
    Moderator
    9 years ago

    With standalone tape drives you do not have to mount the tape that is requested, instead you can load any tape wihich is writeable - i.e. any tape in the same pool as being requested, of the same retention (assuming mixed retentions is not enabled), which still has space, which is not write-locked - or instead is a scratch tape from the ScratchPool.

    If you want A00006 to cease being requested, then just delete volume A00006, or create a new pool named 'BadMedia' and manually assign A00006 to the 'BadMedia' pool.

  • ipmanyak's avatar
    ipmanyak
    Level 5
    9 years ago

    Apparently the head really degraded. Capacity of tapes at me gradually decreased. Recently on a tape it was written 900GB-1.1TB instead of 1.4TB. Now on a new streamer it is accurate 1.49TB

     

    tapes.jpg

  • mph999's avatar
    mph999
    Level 6
    9 years ago

    The read heads are positioned after the write heads.  As the drive writes, it then reads it back.  THis is all invisible to the OS and backup software.  If it detects an issue, that is it cann read what it writes it trys again - if successful, it keeps going.  This uses a bit more tape I believe, and if this happens a lot, quite a bit of extra tape is used, which I suspect is why the tape capacity has dropped in this case.