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BackupExec 2010 dropping tape drive offline

Alistairc
Level 3
Hi,
This is a new topic to re-open the issue discussed here:

https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/forums/tape-drive-goes-offline-second-backup

J
ust to recap on the issue itself:



Running BE2010 Trial on Windows Server 2008 R2 x64.  Hardware is Dell R710 rack server, connected to a HP Ultrium 1760 LTO4 SAS drive via a Dell PERC 6/E SAS Adaptor card.

This is what’s happening:

  1. Setup and run a backup job with full verify.  I’ve tested up to a 250GB job and it completes fine the first time around.
  2. After completion of first job, rerun the same backup job (after tweaking the media overwrite/append etc settings)
  3. The job immediately fails, reporting the drive as offline – cannot bring drive back online using BackupExec administrator
  4. Close BackupExec administrator, restart BackupExec Device/Media service (which also restarts associated service dependencies).
  5. Re-open BackupExec administrator - drive appears to be online again, ready for another job to be kicked off.

 
I’ve completely replaced:

  • Numerous LTO tapes
  • The Dell SAS adaptor that connects the Dell server to the HP rack chassis
  • The HP Rack chassis that houses the 1U internal HP LTO4 Ultrium 1760 SAS drive, SAS adaptor board and all
  • The internal HP LTO Ultrium 1760 drive itself

 
We’ve verified that all above component drivers and firmware are fully up to date.  This problem occurs with both Symantec Tape Drive drivers and HP's official LTO4 tape drivers,
 
To me, the following facts suggest that the problem lies with BackupExec itself:

  1. After the drive goes offline, a simple restart of the BackupExec services seems to bring it back online again
  2. If the drive goes offline, and I stop the BackupExec Device/Media service, I can still access the drive using HP LTT utility, and HP Data Protector Express – only BackupExec detects the drive as offline.
  3. We’ve replaced all possible hardware components and the problem still remains
  4. This problem only ever occurs with BE, I'm testing with HP Data Proctector Express and MS's Data Protection Manager - all work fine.

Luckily, I haven't bought a license for BackupExec yet, however this means I doubt Symantec Support will be willing to spend too much time on it, so I might be forced to go with MS's Data Protection Manager instead if I can't get a resolution soon.

Has anyone seen/resolved this issue before?


Alistair
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Accepted Solutions

Larry_Fine
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re: Running BE2010 Trial on Windows Server 2008 R2 x64.  Hardware is Dell R710 rack server, connected to a HP Ultrium 1760 LTO4 SAS drive via a Dell PERC 6/E SAS Adaptor card.

I believe the problem is the RAID HBA card and is unsupported for tape.  Sorry I didn't spot that sooner.
http://seer.entsupport.symantec.com/docs/325573.htm
http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/stor-sys/matrix/PVMatrix/serveran.htm

Do you have another SAS HBA to test with?

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CraigV
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Mmm...OK, so you say the drive goes offline after making certain tweaks? What settings work, and what settings make it go offline?
Also, are the DP services stopped when you're doing your backups?

Alistairc
Level 3
The only tweaks I'm making are changing the Device/Media tab from Overwrite mode to Append to tape or overwrite if no appendable media is present.  Even if I keep it on overwrite both times and kick off an the job in its identical state, the second job always fails.  Yep, all other non-Symantec backup servers are stopped, this problem was occurring well before HP DPE and Microsoft DPM were installed.

Thanks,
Alistair

Larry_Fine
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WHY is BE taking the drive offline?  Do you get any errors or alerts?  Anything int he Windows event logs?  anything in the adamm.log file (in the BE folder)?

CraigV
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Mmm...OK, then look at getting hold of firmware updates through LTT and verifying that it sees no errors on the tape drive.

AndyBNZ
Level 3
I'm having this exact problem.  Was fine for two weeks, now after every succesfull backup the tape drive goes offline.  It's not a new backup job that kicks it as if you run an inventory it's not available.  Simply putting it back online is enough to get it working.  Running an inventory does not make it go offline, only a backup.

LTO2 connected via iSCSI using starwind.  iSCSI connection is all good, server never ever loses tape drive from hardware, it's just BE 2010 that loses it.  The only error is that the tape drive is unavailable and the job fails.

Alistairc
Level 3
Hi Craig,
I've ran LTT - I'm running latest firmware and no problems are reported on any tests I run.  The tape drive runs fine on all other software suites, the problem only appears with BackupExec.

Andy - yep that sounds identical to my issue alright, are you running Windows Server 2008 R2?

Larry - good question indeed! No idea why BackupExec is detecting it as offline.  There are never any errors in the Windows event logs, I'm running another testrun now so will check out the adamm.log file afterwards and update the thread.

Alistair

AndyBNZ
Level 3

SBS2008 R2.

OK, update - I applied all the hotfixes last night.  Backup ran without issue and tape ejected.

I can then run an inventory which is succesful - it reports no media.

As soon as I put a new tape in it becomes unusable.

By this I mean if you go to 'devices' tape drive appears online, check hardware manager and it's all good.  Right click and it is 'enabled and online'. Run an inventory and it fails with 'drive hardware is offline' 

I then right click it, put it back online and inventory and hardware will run.

SO it appears to be a problem with it reading the new tape perhaps...

CraigV
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You guys are using HP tapes correct? The reason why I ask is that we shipped IBM tapes to 1 of our sites in Asia for use in an HP StorageWorks 1/8 G1 autoloader. Each time we tried to use those tapes, it took the drive offline. Put an HP tape in, and it worked well!
Also make sure you don't have bar code rules enabled...if you don't have bar code labels, it can cause issues.

Alistairc
Level 3
Craig, yep I'm using official HP LTO4 media, and don't have any bar code rules enabled anywhere.  I've upgraded to 2010 R2 in the hope that magically resolves the issue - no luck I'm afraid.

Andy - I don't think it's solely a new tape thing, try running a second backup job using the same tape without ejecting after the initial run - the drive will go probably go offline?

I've ran some further testing - I can run as many drive inventories (immediately after one another) as I like without failure.  However, after any backup, restore, or even catalog job has completed, the next job which utilises the drive in any way (be it inventory, restore, or backup, etc) will attempt to start, but immediately detect the drive as offline and fail.

Andy, can you confirm you can definitely get BE to operate again after forcing the drive online in BackupExec Admin Console?  Even if I force the drive online here after failure, it doesn't actually become usuable again until I restart the BackupExec services.

The fact this is only occurs after job types that require 'long' media transport operations (rewind/fastforward/long read/long write etc), might suggest that something is detecting some sort of timeout on the SAS interface...?

Larry_Fine
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Please check the adamm.log file, it should give valuable clues as to WHY the drive is going offline.

AndyBNZ
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I can confirm that for the last four backups just putting the drive online has worked.

I need to go onsite to check if they are HP tapes..

CraigV
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OK...next step would be to try backing up using NTbackup to see if that puts the drive offline. If it does, it is a hardware issue.
What does running a cleaning tape do...any help?

Alistairc
Level 3
Unfortunately Microsoft, in their infinite wisdom, removed native tape drive support as well as NTBackup from Windows Server 2008, so this is no longer an option.  I've installed HP's Data Protector Express and Microsoft Data Protection Manager for troubleshooting purposes - neither of these applications suffer from the tape dropout problem, all jobs complete successfully.

I've cleared the adamm.log and am running another test run now, I'll review and post the output.

Thanks,
Alistair

AndyBNZ
Level 3
sorry, how can I clear the adamm.log file (tried renaming it but it was in use)?

Also restarting the device and media service once a new tape has been put in means the next job runs without issue.

So my current workaround is to schedule a restart of that service on a nightly basis - not ideal but means I don't have to dial in every night to put the bloomin' tape drive back online.

CraigV
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Andy: I have hit the support flag on this...give it a day or 2, and post whether or not someone helped you.

The ONLY other thing I can suggest is looking into an upgrade to BE 2010 R2 to see if this resolves the issue...

Alistairc
Level 3
Andy,
If you stop the BackupExec Windows services you should be able to clear out the file, restart and kick off a tape job and the adamm.log should start being written to from fresh.

I've discovered the following alert in my logs:


[5920] 08/17/10 12:33:51.946 DeviceIo: 02:00:01:00 - Device error 1117 on "\\.\Tape0", SCSI cmd b5, 5 total errors
[5920] 08/17/10 12:33:56.980 PvlDrive::DisableAccess() - ReserveDevice failed, offline device
       Drive = 1004 "HP 2"
       ERROR = 0x0000001F (ERROR_GEN_FAILURE)

Craig, could you please get Support to get in touch with me about this also, as the original author of this topic?


Thanks,
Alistair

Larry_Fine
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re: SCSI cmd b5

The B5 is an encryption command.  Are you attempting to use hardware encryption?  BE does some of these just to probe the drive capabilities, but it shouldn't cause a crash.

Larry_Fine
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re: Running BE2010 Trial on Windows Server 2008 R2 x64.  Hardware is Dell R710 rack server, connected to a HP Ultrium 1760 LTO4 SAS drive via a Dell PERC 6/E SAS Adaptor card.

I believe the problem is the RAID HBA card and is unsupported for tape.  Sorry I didn't spot that sooner.
http://seer.entsupport.symantec.com/docs/325573.htm
http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/stor-sys/matrix/PVMatrix/serveran.htm

Do you have another SAS HBA to test with?

AndyBNZ
Level 3
OK cleared out the adamm log and ready for tonights backup.

Setup is:

Core Windows 2008 running Hyper-V and SBS 2008 as Virtual Server

Hosted on HP ML350 G6

Connecting using MS iSCSI initiator to:

ML150 G5 with LSI Logic PCI-X Ultra 320 SCSI controller with HP Ultrium LTO2 added as a target on Starwind running with MS iSCSI initiator on Windows 2003.

Have to have it this way as MS don't believe in tapes so theres no passthrough on Hyper-V (thanks) and this is their approved workaround.

I've had no issues on BE 2010 with it until recently.