Unable to make Tape storage work with BE 2012

[Alan0001]

Hello,

We are trying to setup a BE 2012 ( evaluation version ) to allow data backups on to tape drives.

Running BE 2012 on windows 8 server.

We have a Dells PV LT2000 connected to the server via SAS interface. We have a Robotic library with 12 LTO6 tape drives .

Under Slots , I can see the tape drives labelled with barcode labels , however tape drives are showing "0 bytes capacity"

Things I have checked/done :

* Tape drivers are installed.

* Autochanger drives are native to Windows , hence shows Unknown Autochanger device in Device Manager

When i try to clean the Tape Drive , it gives error. Export/Import and "Inventory now" both give errors.

Before we installed Windows 8 on the server , it had linux with Baculla. I had labelled Tape drive then and ran some checks on the tape which were a success.

Post that we decided to drop Baculla and go ahead with BE 2012. However , I am unable to make tape work with BE 2012

Followed tape troubleshooting steps mentioned in the link and all seems to be fine.

http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=TECH24414    

I am not sure if I missed out anything or the issue is due to using bacula on tape drives before putting then on BE 2012.

If yes , how do i change it default ?

I have attached screen shots in the thread.

Any help will be appreciated.

Thanks
 

[CraigV]

...there is no multipathing with tape drive...just make sure your configuration from a hardware perspective is correct.

Thanks!

[Alan0001 · Accepted solution]

Yes , tape does not support multipathing :)

Okay , Seems the issue is now fixed .

* I can see space of all the tape cartridges

* I was able to write 400mb of data and now testing with data size of 700 GB

--> What we did 

* Removed 1 SAS cable and rebooted both tape and Media server ( do not know the order of reboot )

* I was now able to see 1 tape drive in Device Manager . However , it kept going offline.

All operations gave following error :

The job failed with the following error: Physical Volume Library Robot not found.

I was unable to see media changer in the device manager.

Scan for hardware changes didnt show autochanger as well

So I removed all tape drives using BE driver utility since BE still showed 2 tape drives . Rebooted the server.

Installed drivers again and rebooted again. I was now able to see autochanger , however kept getting above mentioned error.

After ensuing all drivers are updated and correct , i rebooted Tape and media server in the respective order.

Post reboot i was able to see space for all cartridges and was able to write to tape. 

I am not sure whether it was 2 paths or the order of reboot that solved the issue.

Will work to find out in next few days .

Thanks everyone for their help to solve the issue.

Regards,

Alan