Randomly Tape Inventory not Running Correctly

[dfeifer]

I have been running backup exec 2012 since the early adopter program. Out of this time I have only had this issue crop up 4-5 times with inventories running on a nightly basis. It is just annoying when this does happen especially when it involves the full server backup over the weekend.

What appears to happen is the inventory will run for maybe 5-10 seconds and list the job as successful but the information does not change. Looking at the inventories over the past week they all list 5-10 seconds which seems odd, unless it is grabbing the info from the drives database itself and not rolling the tapes, since the import i did last night took almost 2 minutes by itself. The drive is a quantum super loader 3 SCSI with firmware b54z.

The average inventory time through May 14th 5:42 then from the 15th to the 25th it has been averaging 8 seconds and listing as a successful job.

[Larry_Fine]

I assume you are running an inventory of a single slot?

There is no way that an inventory job of a physical library can be 8 seconds, so something is wrong.

I would suggest trying ot capture of of these short inventory jobs using tracer.

http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH49432

An inventory job must mount the media in the drive to read it.  A "scan" job would just involve reading the library database, which may or may not require tape movement, depnding upon the state of the library (usually there is no movement, so a scan is quick).

[pkh]

You can only do a scan if you are using barcode labels.  Otherwise, you would still need to do an inventory.

[Larry_Fine]

I believe the OPs Quantum SuperLoader3 has a bar code reader.  Even without bar code labels, a SCAN will usually refresh the empty full status of slots so you have some clue as to what slots are occupied in your library.

[dfeifer]

correct. we also have barcodes on all tapes. I had actually never used the scan feature not understanding what it actually did but it looks like it could be usefull. Perhaps I should set up a scan job instead of the full inventory?

I tried using tracer and I had to hit inventory 3 times before it proceeded past a few seconds.

I am seeing some strangeness in the job logs though. The full inventory that I watched with the tracer "according to the tracer" ran from 11:26 to 11:33 and the job log that I was watching on the be server was counting up as well. once the job completed though it no longer lists under the job history. The job log i had autoclosed when the job completed and looking at the job history all I see now are two previous successful inventories today that are 5 and 7 seconds each.

[Larry_Fine]

A successful inventory of a single slot should show a pair of A5 MOVE_MEDIUM commands.  One moves the tape to the drive, the second puts it back in the slot.  These commands each typically take 30-120 seconds, depending upon the library picker speed.

In your traces of a very short inventory job, do the MOVE_MEDIUM commands not exist?  or do they have errors?

[pkh]

Both the scan and inventory jobs do the same thing, i.e. identify which tape is in which slot.  When you have barcode labels and do a scan, the barcode labels are read and this is sufficient to identify the tape and its location.

When you do an inventory, the tape is moved to the tape drive and the internal physical label is read.  This is slow, but this is needed if you do not have barcode labels.

Since starting to use barcode labels, I have not done an inventory yet.  It is just not necessary.

[Biker_Dude]

Please attach the tracer log so that we can take a look at what happended.