Backup Exec 2015 - Tape drivers

[ddorton]

I have been plagued by tape drive issues for the last week.  I have a Dell TL2000 library with a single lto6 drive in it.  It is less than 6 months old.  The library and the drive continually pass all diagnostic tests.  The library, drive and hba all have the latest firmware.  I have deleted the library from Backup Exec several times.  After deleting the library and restarting the libary and computer Backup Exec is automatically adding the drive back.

In device manager the library is showing up as Unknown Media Changer.  If you click driver details it shows up as tpfilter.sys, provider Symantec, file version 42.0.7216

The tape drive shows up as LTO Tape Drive.  Driver details are ltotape.sys and tpfilter.sys, Provider Microsoft, Version 6.3.9600.16384 (winblue_rtm.130821-1623)

If I am not mistaken the changer should have a microsoft driver and the drive should have a symantec driver.

How should these be configured with BE 2015 on Server 2012 R2?  I can only find two sets of instructions online, one says to use tapeinst.exe which doesn't appear to exist anymore and the other says to click on latest drivers in the tech support menu which is just a link to a useless support page.

[Larry_Fine · Accepted solution]

After deleting the library and restarting the libary and computer Backup Exec is automatically adding the drive back.

That is expected behavior.  BE assumes that it owns & controls everything that it can discover.

In Windows device manager, the changer should show up as "unknown medium changer" with a Microsoft driver.  The LTO6 tape drive will probably show up with an IBM name, but it should have a Microsoft driver.

Tapeinst is obsolete with Windows 2012 and up.  The best source of information that I have seen is at the tope of the BE 15 HCL, in the "Introduction" section.  www.backupexec.com/compatibility

What issues are you seeing?

What HBA are you using?  If the HBA supports RAID, please make sure it is one of the few supported RAID HBAs  http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH70907

[ddorton]

It started with backup jobs failiing in the verify stage.  After removing the library from BE and re-adding it serveral times the jobs fail more quickly and mark the tapes as bad.  Seems like a tape drive error but the drive is passing all diagnostic tests.

The Medium Changer shows up as unknown.  On the driver page it says Driver Provider: Microsoft.  If you click Driver Details it says Provider: Symantec Corporation.

The HBA is a Dell 12gbps SAS.

[Larry_Fine]

When a backup fails with a verify error, I would suggest running another (manual) verify job and/or a re-directed restore of that backup set to see if the data is really on the tape.  If the data is on the tape, then you must be getting intermittant read errors.  If the verify or restore fail consistently, then the data is probably not on the tape and you had a write error.

Check the statistics of the tape drive in the BE GUI.  Do you see a high number of read/write soft/hard errors?

I assume that you are running the ITDT diagnostics program?  http://www.dell.com/support/article/us/en/04/SLN156606/EN

[Biker_Dude]

"I can only find two sets of instructions online, one says to use tapeinst.exe which doesn't appear to exist anymore and the other says to click on latest drivers in the tech support menu which is just a link to a useless support page"

Please post the link leading to the useless support page. It will be helpful in ascertaining if there is non-applicable information out there with regards to this situation.