Physical volume library drive not available

[Damin_Hansen]

Just upgraded from 10d to 11d and backups fail with the error message "physical volume drive not available".
It looks like to me that the backup exec can't find the physical drive even though when I set up the backup job selections all of the drives were available.

Can anyone help?

Message was edited by:
Damin HansenMessage was edited by:
Damin Hansen

[Mark_Woodford]

Damin,

Did you ever figure this out?

I'm in the same boat now after performing in-place upgrade - everything works (oh, except actually writing data to tapes) and

live support is (even if you want to pay for it) does not appear to exist.

[Philip_Pearson]

Dodgy software this backup exec. Does your tape device appear in device manager? if not shut down your server, turn off your tape device for 20 or so seconds, turn the tape device on until you get the ready status, start up your server again.

If your tape device does appear in device manager, remove it and go through this process again.

There is a tape library patch but it is not at the location the link points to AND the phone support people can't seem to find it, go figure.

[Deepali_Badave]

Hello,

Are you using the Symantec drivers or OEM drivers?

Are you facing a tape related issue as in are you getting errors as event id's 7, 9, 11 or 15?

Regards,

[Barbara_Murrtau]

We were getting the same message when trying to back up with 11d (hotfix 6 installed) on one of our servers since we renamed the server (it replaced another server, and we renamed the old server, then renamed the new server to the original name of the old server). This happened when we try to back up to tape or disk.

Then we restarted the BE services on the new server and now we can't even start a job -- instead we get "Ready; No media servers are available."

This new server is a secondary server in an SSO environment. The primary server backs up fine.

We have uninstalled and reinstalled BE and rebooted numerous times. Symantec has not been able to help so far.

[Barbara_Murrtau]

UPDATE: Right before I posted the last message, I had rebuilt the database indices and repaired the database on the primary server. I then re-tried a backup to disk job on the new (secondary) server. It just sat there for about 5 minutes and then suddenly started running! So it's working, at least for the moment.

[Philip_Pearson]

I tried proprietry drivers and they caused more problems so I am stuck with symantec drivers.

Go to the device manager and delete your tape drive and library
Power down your server
reboot your library/tape drive
When it is back to the ready state power up your server
manually download and apply the hotfixes, don't rely on live update

see what happens

[Damin_Hansen]

Fixed the problem after going back to 10d for year end.
The first time I installed 11d I installed over 10d as an update, didn't work.
This time I uninstalled 10d completely and did a fresh install of 11d, didn't recognize my tape drive at all. Did a repair on 11d and reinstalled the tape drive drivers. Did a complete shut down or the server running 11d. Upon reboot the tape drive was recognized, not sure which process fixed the problem, but so for so good on backups. Keeping my fingers crossed.

[Chad_Watson]

I am having a similar issue.

New server - just loaded 11d (not an upgrade). I'm backing up to a Seagate USB drive. I can see the drive in Device Manager. I can copy files to the drive. I can set up the job in backup exec. When I run the job, I get the same error message...Physical Volume Library Drive not available.

[Philip_Pearson]

Patches installed?

[Peter_Tran]

I have this problem with 11D after doing an in place upgrade from version 9.1. Is there a patch, if so please provide the link.

this is an annoying problem to say the least.

Funny thing is, I can erase a tape fine, but if I try to do a backup to it it gives me Physical Volume Library Drive not available. Go figure.

[Ken_Putnam]

Try editing the job and reselecting the target device and saving

there were reports of Selection Lists getting hosed in 10d -> 11d upgrades, perhaps your device table got mangled also

[Sandy_Sandifer]

Damin,

Glad to hear you were able to get it working. For everyone else that is using a tape drive, I would we start by breaking it down to see if the problem revolves around BEWS not being able to do any type of backup at all, or just in relation to tape drives. Please perform the following:
1. First of all, make sure all Backup Exec services are started.
2. On the backup server, check Event Viewer to see if any port 10000 errors are occurring. If so, make sure this port is open for communication between it and the remote server (if applicable).
3. Create a backup to disk folder inside Backup Exec on the backup server, and do a small test job to itself using that newly created backup to disk folder as the device. This will eliminate the tape drive from the equation.
4. If it succeeds, then we can continue on with troubleshooting the tape drive issue. If not, try changing the remote agent service on the server to run as the Backup Exec service account and not as the local system account, and reattempt the backup.
5. If the tape drive continues to be the issue, shut down all Backup Exec services, and open up ntbackup (the Windows backup utility). Attempt backups to the drive from there.
6. If successful, we no know it's the communication between the drive and Backup Exec. If not, I would speculate there is an issue with the connection of the drive or the configuration and would recommend running through the following technote:
http://support.veritas.com/docs/192216
7. If ntbackup worked, then perform the following:
--Run the c:\program files\symantec\Backup Exec\tapeinst.exe utility and choose to "uninstall and remove all Symantec device drivers for all devices on your system."
--Shutdown the server, shutdown the drive/loader. Boot up the loader/drive. when it's not blinking or moving anymore, bootup the server.
--Run the c:\program files\symantec\Backup Exec\tapeinst.exe utility again, and choose to "use symantec tape drivers for all supported tape devices."
--Shutdown the server, shutdown the drive/loader. Boot up the loader/drive. when it's not blinking or moving anymore, bootup the server.
--Reattempt a backup.

Please let us know if this resolves your issue, and if not, what errors are you receiving at this point.

Thanks.

Backup Exec for Windows Servers Free E-mail Support
http://seer.entsupport.symantec.com/email_forms/intro_emailsup.asp

[Peter_Hueschen]

I have the same issue here but I have found I can conduct a inventory of the drive and also eject the tapes. However if I try a backup, it fails with the message.

[Briant_Dunnican]

I fixed the problem without doing most of the things that have been suggested.

1) make sure you can do a file backup. That has to work first
2) If you cannot then the problem is the account you are using to run you services. You have the system service account and that account is not an Admin account with the correct rights. Create an account to do backups and make it part of the domain admins. Change all of the services to use that account.

That should fix your problems!

Good Luck,

The Master