BE2014 Duplicate Tape jobs lagged time writing to media

[DASFTP]

I have been experencing some lag time with queded tape jobs picking up media and writing to tape.  I have 150 jobs that write to disk first and then a duplicate to tape job should start immediately after the disk job finishes.  I have two tape drives in the library and have many jobs waiting that say "Ready; No writable idle devices are available."  When one job finishes writing to tape another jobs should immediately start writing to the tape in the drive.  This is normal and what I would expect.

This appears to occur most times but it does appear that sometimes the drive starts looking for different media in the drive.  I'm not sure if the tape drive puts the tape back in the library and then picks it back up and decides to start writing to it again. Unsure why the next tape job is just not continously writing to the tape.  Some jobs start writing to the tape 10 seconds after the previous job finishes. Some take a few minutes and we have seen it take up to 20 minutes to start wrtiting to the same tape. Its pretty random and not happening to the same jobs or any particular tape drive or tape library.  We did not see this occuring when we were using BE2010 but do see this occuring in BE2014.

Any ideas?

We are using BE2014 SP2 and have the most current drivers on our HP LTO6 Tape Library MSL4048.

Thanks,

DASFTP

[CraigV]

Hi,

I am positive that when the D2T job completes, it puts the tape back. While you get that "No idle devices" message because both drives are constantly in use, the next D2T job starts up and then BE has to put in the tape to use, be it the tape used in the previous job, or a new tape to append/overwrite.

This would be by design...finish the job, put the tape back, grab it again for the next job.

Thanks!

[DASFTP]

Ok - Thanks CraigV

[CraigV]

Glad to have helped!

Thanks!

[Larry_Fine · Accepted solution]

BE changed some things between BE 2010 and BE 2012.  Generally, if the robotic library is private to that BE server, than tape dismounts are delayed to see if the next job may want to use that same tape.  If the robotic library is shared (CASO, SSO, fibre stuff), then the tape is dismounted immediately to give another BE server a chance to run its jobs.

You have some control over the timing with the “Next Job Wait Time” setting.  It is changed via regedit or BEutility.

See more details here: https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/forums/backupexec-2012-disable-auto-eject-tape-library

Since you are seeing more mounts and dismounts that you think are required, I would try increasing it from 60 seconds to 120 seconds.

[DASFTP]

Thanks Larry...I will try changing this to 120 seconds.