Backup Exec 2010 and LTO4 Tape Drive issue

[Grayc]

I have a Dell PowerEdge R610 media server running BE 2010 and a Dell TL4000 connected to it, which has an internal LTO4 tape drive.

When running backup jobs that are larger than what an LTO4 tape can hold, instead of spanning to the next available tape, the tape drive simply goes "offline".  The tape currently in the LTO4 tape

drive is never returned to it's slot.

Any backup job that is smaller than the capacity of the LTO4 runs fine.  Unfortunately, I have a number of jobs now that are large enough to span two LTO4 tapes.

So far, I have tried everything from reinstalling the vendors tape drive drivers, changed back to the Symantec drivers, resorted to rerunning large jobs a second time but with a smaller selection list, or

simply leaving the backup in the backup-to-disk folder. 

When I poked around the forums, I came across a number solutions.  One solution I came across was to restart the Backup Exec Device and Media services.  Unfortunately, this needs to be done

within a 2 to 3 hour window prior to when the backup job is scheduled run. And, yes, you probably guessed it, if the running job needs to span to a second  tape, the tape drive goes offline again.

Any suggestions as to what might be causing this wierd behavior?  Any help would be greately appreciated!

[AmolB]

Do you see any active alerts in the alerts tab or any error message in the windows event viewer

which is related to hardware.

[Kiran_Bandi]

Is your robot working fine?

Check it with the help of vendor specific diagnostic tools. May be your robot is unable to move the tape from drive to slot.

Regards....

[CraigV]

...that sounds like the robotics don't move the tape from the drive into an available slot...possibly hardware-related issue. Or, the tape becomes stuck. An inventory job issued either from BE or the library itself will show if the robotics is working.

Also check and make sure that you haven't overfilled the library. That's possible if you have a tape in the drive, and you fill up all the slots, that there is nowhere for the now active tape to be moved too...

[Grayc]

Hi!  Thanks for all the tips!  I've run the vendor's diagnostics utility and it did not report anything wrong with the tape libray.  This didn't surprize me at all since I was able to import, export, erase, move, scan and label media in the tape library to begin with.  And when restarting the BE Device and Media service, the tape is moved from the LTO drive back in it's library slot.

I'm just puzzled that I can not duplicate a B2D job to tape when the job spans beyond one tape. The job reaches the end the tape and, voila, the LTO4 tape goes offline. 

What's even wierder is having to restart the BE Device and Media service between one-tape-only jobs.  If I don't, when the second job launches, it gets the scratch media, puts it into the LTO4 drive, which immediately goes offline. 

[Grayc]

Hi again!  I still have this problem and have contacted Dell Tech Spt.  They had me do some BE2010 R2 tweaks with regards to overwrite period and append period, and setting the job/policy to "overwrite" the media.  Here's a quick recap on where I stand now:

I am able to import, inventory, catalog and quick erase new/recycled tapes. 

When I launch a job, it grabs one of the tapes and writes to it.  If the job spans to a second tape, the second tape is taken from "Scratch Media", is inserted into the tape drive.  For some strange reason, BE2010R2 recognizes the tape as "Retired Media" and the tape drive goes offline until I restart BE services.

If I have a two jobs scheduled where the first job completes using only one tape, the second job will start, grab a "Scratch Media" tape and insert it into the tape drive.  At this point, BE2010R2 takes the tape drive offline and I find the tape in "Retired Media" media set!

Restore jobs are not effected by this problem.

At this point, both the Dell Tech Spt guy and I are stumped!  Any suggestions/recommendations on resolving this problem?

Thanks!

[pkh]

Go to the BE installation directory and use BEUtility to do a repair of the BEDB.

[CraigV]

...you're not running partitions in your library are you? If so, and there aren't scratch tapes in that particular partition, BE doesn't look elsewhere for a free tape.

[Grayc]

Hi!

Just ran a repair on BEDB.  I kicked off a backup job using the tape drive. Will update tomorrow with test results!

Thanks for your help!

[Grayc · Accepted solution]

The problem finally was solved after working with the Dell Tech Support folks.  The problem was the controller card.  The media server had one RAID controller card connected to both a RAID and the tape library. 

Since the discovery, a 6 Gbps HBA card was purchased and installed in the media server.  It now connects the media server to the tape library.  Backup jobs now can successfully write to tape, spanning as many tapes as a single jobs needs to use.