2 Simultaneous Jobs Only Even with 3 Drives & LEO

[Benjamin_Presne]

2 Libraries, 1 has 2 SDLT drives, 1 has 1 DLT IV drive.
-Own LEO license

Since upgrading to version 10.. I can't have more than 2 drives at the same time, regardless of device. Always have 'Ready; No idle devices are avilable'. Did something change with the licensing on 10 that's making this happen?

(e.g. If I run three jobs, one for each drive, as soon as first two jobs load media, the third job read "No idle devices..." even though a third drive is available and ready.)

Ben Presnell
Boston Capital

[Shilpa_pawar_2]

Hi,

Using Drive pools, multiple jobs can be run simultaneously. A drive pool is a grouping of drives for Backup Exec operations. Drive pools can contain different types of drives, including specific drives in multi-drive robotic
libraries.
You can run the as many numbers of jobs simultaneously as the drives in drive pool.

Refer these technotes:
How to run concurrent jobs using a library in Backup Exec 9.x and 10.0 for Windows Servers
http://seer.support.veritas.com/docs/262876.htm

Creating and configuring drive pools in VERITAS Backup Exec (tm) 9.x and 10.x for Windows Servers
http://seer.support.veritas.com/docs/262932.htm



Additional Information :
For information on the recent VERITAS Backup Exec security vulnerabilities, including links to the downloads for the necessary hotfixes, please refer to the following document:
Patch summary for Security Advisories VX05-001, VX05-002, VX05-003, VX05-005, VX05-006, VX05-007

http://seer.support.veritas.com/docs/277429.htm




NOTE : If we do not receive your reply within two business days, this post would be marked "assumed answered" and would be moved to "answered questions" pool.

[Ken_Putnam]

@benjamin
I don't work for Veritas, so this is a guess, but if you only have one LEO, I think that is the reason. The second drive in the first library requires one, and the second library also requires one. (Out of the box, BackupExec supports one library with one drive)

But again, this is only a guess.


@Shilpa
Your response did not even come close to answering the specific question asked.

"Did the licensing of multiple libraries with multiple drives change with v10"

He had it working before the upgrade from v9.1, so your technotes about how to set things up were worthless, weren't they?

[Benjamin_Presne]

Thanks for the post Ken.

LEO permits you to add an additional library/changer to BEX by allowing another device to have drives. So, while my primary library has 2 drives, it doesn't require an LEO license. However, because I still use our older DLTIV changer to run restore jobs, it requires an LEO to run jobs. Apparently, if I add another changer (e.g. our older DAT changer), I would either need to buy a new license or disable one of the other two devices already online.

Now, for the problem. Shilpa, your post wasn't helpful. Ken, your post was partly helpful, but I ended up contacting Veritas support. The issue was related to the entries for the changers/libraries in the BEX database. (This also solved another related issue where older tapes would show up as 'Cleaning Media' or simply not be recognized by the changers. I would have to recatalog each tape to overcome the problem.)

To resolve the issue, I disabled and then removed the drives and changers from the Device tab. I then stopped and restarted the services. After this, I ran the device configuration wizard, installed Veritas drivers again, and then configured the drives and changers. Once I was finished, I again stopped/started the services. This fixed the issue and allowed all three drives to run jobs simultaneously.

The lesson here is that the BEX database controls alot more than I had realized. Once I fixed the devices, the problems with the tapes (being changed to cleaning media or not used for a restore even though the tape was imported by BEX) was resolved.

In summary: the solution is to remove your changers and drives and then add them back again.