Tape Library Offline after upgrade to VMware 6.7

[Carlosfme]

Hi there,

I have one problem in my BackupExec 20.3 that i will describe as must as i can.

We have 2 Hosts VMware and one Library IBM TS3100 with two drives LTO6 direct attach to one host by fibre (1 Fibre for each drive). As i was on VMware Version 6.0 u2, runing a Windows Server 2012r2 with the drives and media mapped by SCSI Devices to the virtual machine it was runing flawlessly, after the upgrade of VMware to 6.7u1 version, the drives became offline when the media server sents a request to the library, this one starts to move and load the tape but on BackupExec the drive even see the barcode, the virtual machine didn´t suffered any change.

After removed, added again i have upgraded the firmware version of the Library and after this i checked that backup exec, on media properties the firmware didn´t change to the new one, i have upgraded the drivers for the library on Device Settings in virtual machine but still the same.

Does this happen to anyone?

Thank you.

[pkh]

Pass-through from VM to physical tape drives attached to the house is not supported by BE and, I believe, VMware.

You are just lucky that it worked before

[Carlosfme]

Yes it is possible on specified models of Tape Library.

I have this configuration on 3 or 4 customers, and on this one it was working without any problems before upgrading.

[pkh]

The question is not whether it is possible, but whether the configuration is supported and you can get support when you encounter problems.

[Colin_Weaver · Accepted solution]

Your description is typical of information we have seen from other customers that tried to get tape passthrough into VMware to work. Basically you can sometimes see the library inside the VM, but conistent and reliable connectivity to the library is not possible and frequent but slightly random issues, in terms of exact symptoms, are seen. Once such sympton described by customers, was that tapes were no longer being moved correctly from slot to drive at the start of Backup Jobs.

Basically if you get it to work, you would be unsupported and this means that continuing to use such a configuration would be a risk.  If however it does not work or worked for a while but has either stopped working or has regular issues with reliable connectivity then support cannot help and I suspect there are very few, if any, non-Veritas contributors on these forums that can really assist.

[Carlosfme]

Yes i understand your point of view, also i knew that this method was unsupported, but maybe other person was able to sucessfully connected in this versions.

I will try some other configurations on my own and if it works fine, if doesn´t we will have to change our method to duplicate to tape.

Thank you all.

[Carlosfme · Accepted solution]

Hello to everyone,

About this situation, sorry for my insistance but i have found a way to resolve the "virtual connection" of a Tape Library into a Virtual Machine runing on VMware 6.7, yes i know it will continued to be unsupported but for the poor clients that cannot buy another physical server this will works.

So, as we know we have mapped the Fibre Device as a SCSI Device into a VM and on VMWare 6.0 Version and this works despite the problems that frequently occours. In this new configuration we have decied to mapp the device as a PCI Device so what i did was:

Go to VCenter, select the Host that have the physical connection to the Library, click on Configure, on the left pane click on PCI Devices and add as DirectPath I/O PCI Devices the physical Device, and after this restart the Host.

After the restart, go to the Virtual Machine and add the PCI Device that will appear. Add manually a tape do each drive and restart the Virtual Machine.

Success.