Backup Exec 11d - DAS Tape Drives shows - 'In Use' even after DAS power offs, System reboots, and Backup Exec Service restarts

[PcSysAdmin]

This past weekend one of the administrators at my company performed some maintenance on our servers.  He ran updates and restarted the server that is running Backup Exec 11d while it was in the middle of running a duplicate job to two of my three tape drives.  When it came back up it thinks the drives are 'In Use' no matter how many times I restart the Backup Exec services.

Setup:
Windows 2003 Server
Tape System:  Direct-Attached-Storage (DAS) SCSI U320 Exabyte/Tandberg VXA-320 drives
Temporary Disk Storage System: DAS SAS w/ numerous SATA drives for use in the D2D2T setup

When I came in on Monday the DAS VXA tape drives were still showing busy.  In Backup Exec it didn't show any active jobs, however it showed the drives were 'In Use' without any explanation by what.  So I figured that since the DAS never performed a Power Off during the reboot of the server that perhaps it is still running a backup without the SCSI controller telling it that it has been reset.  So I went ahead and performed the 10 second hold down the eject button on the VXA drives and reset the drives.  It kicked off the LEDs like it should and ejected the tape.  I ran tape cleaning cartridges through them and then popped in the tapes.  In the meantime Backup Exec ended up showing them as Off-Line since they were reset at the device level.  I restarted the Backup Exec Services and managed to get them to reappear however they still show 'In-Use.' 

As I was not feeling like I was making any progress, I figured it wouldn't hurt to stop the Backup Exec services again and then Power Off the DAS tape drive system.  I did this.. Brought them back up and all the status lights on the drive were fine.  Then I went ahead and used the VXA Tools provided by Tandberg to test the drives out.  They passed all their tests, reading and writing to a tape.  So I restarted the Backup Exec services.  When it came back up it showed the two drives were still in 'In-Use' like before. 

So at this point I figured I'd just go ahead and schedule a restart for this past night and hope Backup Exec would stop being confused when it came back up.  I did this last night and when it came back up it shows the same situation 'In-Use'  and I can't backup do those drives.

So my only thought is that Backup Exec is storing the 'In-Use' somewhere in it's database, even though it doesn't know what job is using it.  So it can't clear the flag and I'm stuck wondering how to clear it manually.

Any thoughts?

[PcSysAdmin]

Looking through the forums I found several references to the BEUtility.exe to clear up issues if the Backup Exec database seems to be corrupt.  I went ahead and ran this then ran the following:
Check Database Consistency
Repair Database

After all that I'm still in the same boat.. Both Tape 2 and Tape 3 show 'In-Use' still..

[MitchR]

Don't know if this is your issue, but I had simmilar problems with a library that, after a firmware update, refused to show in BE as on-line.

Did the typical power off reset process that SCSI seems to need:
-power off the server & library
-power on the library, wait a few seconds
-power on the server

I later found out that the library itself had been set to "offline".  Had to find the setting via the web interface to the library, though I'm sure it was available via the front control panel somwhere.

After telling the library to be back Online, restarted the BE services and life was good again.

[PcSysAdmin · Accepted solution]

MitchR.. Thanks for the reply..

So far I'm pretty sure that isn't my situation because it isn't a robotic library system.  They are stand-alone drives all hooked up on the DAS to the servers U320 4-channel port. 

Growing impatient in trying to fix the issue I went ahead and tested a couple things.. The Tape Drive 1 that wasn't even showing the 'In-Use' wasn't able to even run an Inventory or an Eject from BE.  Every time it just errored out.  So I'm pretty sure all the drives are messed up in the BE config because of my elf.

My thought was if that is the case then try creating some temporary BacktupToDisk folders (one for each drive) to move the jobs to these temporary disks.  Then delete the Tape Drives..  After deleting the drives I went ahead and restarted the services.. An nothing was showing up.  So I used the 'Device Configuration Wizard' to get BE to scan for the drives and reload them with the Symantec Divers.

The drives didn't appear even after running the 'View' -> 'Refresh' so I went ahead and restarted the BE Services.

After it came back up the drive that wasn't previously showing 'In use' is now showing 'In use' and the other two drives are showing up normally...  Again there were no active jobs showing up in the Job Monitor.. After about 5 minutes it finally stopped showing 'In Use' and then responded to the 'Eject' option.  So I popped in three tapes and ran an 'Inventory' ...  They all three ran their inventory without issue..

So I popped in the tapes that were supposed to be used in the backup job that was 'stopped' in the not so graceful manor.. Two of the tapes showed up with no Label anymore.. So.. I'm thinking they probably need reformatted.. Stop the BE Services and use the Tandberg VXA Tools to reformat the tapes..

I'll relabel the tapes and give it a try..

[PcSysAdmin]

After reformatting the tapes in the VXA Tool and then restarting the BE Services.. I relabeled the tapes... Then deleted the temporary BackupToDisk drives.  It asks you where you want to change jobs that point to that BackupToDisk folder when you delete it.. Point them back to the Tape Drives.. Then delete the BackupToDisk folder ( it errors on the first delete requiring you to do it twice)..

Kick off a job and it's duplicating to the Tape w/o issues..