FC drive/library goes offline frequently in SSO environment

[Stefan_Pietsch]

Good morning,

we have two BE 12.5 servers connected to a Overland Neo8000 library with 2 LTO4 drives and a Overland Reo9100 VTL via FC SAN.
SSO and Library Expansion Option are installed on both servers.
One Server is Central Admin Server, the other Managed Media Server.
We make backups to the VTL and then duplicate the backup sets to the Neo8000.

During the duplicate jobs the drive(s) of the Neo8000 frequently go offline.
Sometimes it's one drive, sometimes both, and sometimes it's the whole library.
Furthermore sometimes a drive is only shown as offline on one backup server, sometimes on both, ...
The jobs hang with "Ready, no idle devices..." or are "missed" or "failed"
When I take the drives online again, I can start a job, sometimes two, and then sometime it get's offline again.
Restarting the library doesn't make any difference.

Medium changers are configured as "Unknown Medium Changer", BE drivers are installed for all tape devices.
BE 12.5 is patched with most current hotfixes, we had the same problem with all patch levels before.
OS platform is Windows Server 2003 SP2 Standard Edition with all the latest security patches installed.
We also had a similar problem with the VTL, but that was fixed after updating Windows and BE some time ago.

Any suggestions?

Kind regards,
Stefan

[CraigV]

Hi Stefan,

When you patched your media server, did you then patch your remote server too?
Have you installed the latest drivers on both your servers?
My problem with our MSL6060 was a faulty drive when getting the same error. See if Overland have a diagnostic tools that you can download and see if there are any hardware issues.

Laters!

[Stefan_Pietsch]

Hi Craig,

I always patch both servers.
After each hotfix installation I deinstalled and reinstalled the drivers, so the latest drivers are installed.
We've got the problem with both drives, so I don't really think it's a faulty drive, but I'll try to get a diagnostic tool to be sure.
Thanks for your advice!

Kind regards,
Stefan

[CraigV]

OK...then I would consider running the SAN SSO wizard again to reapply the settings.
If it still happens, then I would get Overland involved.

[Stefan_Pietsch]

I just downloaded HP LTT and will check the drive health and firmware as soon as the drives aren't in use anymore.
What exactly do you mean with "SAN SSO wizard"? In "Tools\Wizards" there's no wizard for SSO.

[CraigV]

Should be on that list.
It won't be under Tools --> Wizards, but will definitely be under Tools. Run that on both servers, starting with the SAN SSO server itself.

[Stefan_Pietsch]

I can't find any SSO configuration in the UI.
I'll try to reconfigure it with BEUtility after I checked the drives.
Thanks again for your help. I'll let you know if it worked.

[CraigV]

That's weird. Can you please post the licenses that you have enabled? SAN SSO should be there on that list.