Replacing a Tape Library

[erikbennett]

Quantum PX502, 2 drives, Fiber connected, Backup Exec 2010R3.

Wanted to get some opinions. Our Autoloader gave up the ghost Thursday and the entire chassis was replaced. Now, the old Fiber card and Drives were moved over from the old one, but obviously, Backup Exec will see this as new hardware.

Just curious what the community would do to replace hardware this way in the eyes of Backup Exec. Treat it as all new hardware (i.e. delete the old library from Devices and go through the process of adding it) or something different?

Any chance this new hardware is going to cause problems with my back catalog of backup tapes?

Thanks.

[Backup_Exec1 · Accepted solution]

Hi

Q :Wanted to get some opinions. Our Autoloader gave up the ghost Thursday and the entire chassis was replaced. Now, the old Fiber card and Drives were moved over from the old one, but obviously, Backup Exec will see this as new hardware.

Just curious what the community would do to replace hardware this way in the eyes of Backup Exec. Treat it as all new hardware (i.e. delete the old library from Devices and go through the process of adding it) or something different?

ANS:

Yes you can remove your old tape library from devices tab if it is still showing there

When you connect new h/w please esnure few things

1 Medium changer should be installed with Microsoft driver called unknown medium changer

2 Your tape drivers should be installed with Latest symantec drivers , To install the symantec drivers you can use Tapeinst.exe

3 Once you have configured all this do a good power cycle by powering off the library  & media server and powering on the library & wait for it to be intialized & then power on the media server

4 Once you see the Media serve is Power on, Library should be seen in backup exec.

Moreover please check link below which describes the configuration of library with Backup exec

http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH24414

Q:Any chance this new hardware is going to cause problems with my back catalog of backup tapes?

ANS:

No , There should no be any issue with catalog , Untill your new library is able to read your old tape properly ,There should not be any issue with catalogs

Thanks

[pkh]

1) You should go to the BE installation directory and use tapeinst.exe to delete all instances of the old library from BE

2) Stop the media server and the library

3) Start the tape library

4) Start the media server

5) Ensure that the library and tape drive is recognised and functioning correctly in the Windows Device Manager.

6) In BE, install the library if necessary.  Go to Tools --> Wizards ---> Device Configuration Wizard to do so.

Your new library should not cause any problems with your old backups.  You might have to change the way your job is targeted because the library and tape drive will have new names in BE.

[erikbennett]

One last piece of the puzzle. Even though all of the Fibre connected devices (Auto-loader fibre card, 2 tape drives) remained the same though the actual chassis was swapped out, the addresses for the fibre ports changed on our switch. Once that was corrected on our switch, everything went eaxctly as you said above. Thanks.