BE 2010 R3: power outages, now tape drive Offline

[MIXIT]

Hi all.  Power outages at this customer's location have been a big pain in the *.  Every time the site has power issues, resuling in the server and tap drive going offline (power cycle that is), when they come back up, the tape drivce shows as Offline in BE. 

If I right-click the drive under Devices tab, I can select Online.  This puts it "online" however it just says "In use" after that, and this doesn't go away.  Job Monitor shows a couple of jobs scheduled, with the one that should run being "Ready, No Idle devices available" or something along thos elines.

It seems the event logs have nothing to say.  I don't know enough about BE logs to even know where to view them. 

Basically looking for any advice on this and perhaps where to look for real information.  I've rebooted the server, but am remote so can't power cycle the tape drive.  Btw, can you put a powered off tape drive into an Online state? 

Also looking for any way to verify that the drive is actually ON, remotely.  It's a Dell T610 server, with HP Ultrijm HH5 LTO5 external SAS drive. 

Ugh, I hate power outages :)

[pkh]

You can try pausing and unpausing the tape drive.

[Gurvinder]

Restart Device and Media Service once and see if the TL comes online

The steps to ensure all is fine should be :

Stop all BE Services and run discover.exe (present in BE Install Path).

Discover.exe (This would help to ensure that the TL is communicating fine with the OS, note : this should be run with all BE services stopped ) -  http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH87501

If all is fine then you can check the adamm log to see if the TL is discovered fine

adamm log - http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH87501

[MIXIT]

Hi pkh, no luck on that . It says Paused (In use) so I guess the "in use" remains no matter what.  I'll move on to trying the other steps so far in this thread.  Thank you just the same. 

[MIXIT]

I'm not sure if it matters in our disucssion, but this is a single external tape drive, not a TL.  Just mentioning but I imagine these steps are universal.  I ran discover.exe and based on the article, the output below probably means there is no communication at all with the tape drive since I should see some of those INQ lines under the ByGuid sections I think.  Here is the output:

System Page Size: 4096

ByName: Tape

ByName: MediumChanger

ByName: Changer

ByPort: Scsi

ByGuid: Tape

ByGuid: Changer

ByGuid: ChangerIomega

ByGuid: CDRom

  00:00:00:00 05 00 \\?\ide#cdromplds_dvd-rom_dh-16d5s___________________vd15____#5&334745ad&0&0.0.0#{53f56308-b6bf-11d0...}
              INQ 00 "PLDS    DVD-ROM DH-16D5SVD15"
              INQ cc ""
              INQ dc ""
              INQ 80 ""

Also I reviewede adamm.log (your link for this had pointed to previous article already pasted into you reply, I believe the correct one is: http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=TECH89750 ).  Also adamm.log doesn't show anything that I can see as communication with the device. 

So I'll call to see if the unit is even powreed on, maybe it's just that simple.  Will post back. 

[Ahmed_Nmichi_Ha]

Please log a case with Symantec Support  to resolve the issue, there are many steps to follow to narrow down the root casue of the problem.

[MIXIT · Accepted solution]

Well, the issue turned out to be that the drive was powered off.  Part of the disadvantage of being remote I guess.  It's a shame the software and general archecture of tape systems doesn't seem to allow for a few basic status indicators, such as power state.  The adamm.log file can be helpful true, but too bad three isn't something like ACPI for tape drves in the way PC's have it, where you can see that a unit is online via the 5v aux charge, and perhap wake the unit up via a "SCSI MagicPacket".  Anyway, Thank You all for the useful information.  I would only log a case with support if this were urgent but since all involved get sympoints, might as well jump through the steps here provided it does't get too complex.