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2nd robot not being inventoried

ekim
Level 3
Hi,

I have 2 Dell ML6000's that are linked together and also each has 2 drives connected by fiber to our RHEL NetBackup server. When configuring the robots in NB's GUI, it shows up as 1 robot and 4 drives (without the 2nd robot, only 2 drives are detected). I go through the GUI and set these up, and all 4 drives show under the robot TLD (0). There are 20 tapes in each robot, but when I inventory the robot it only reads slots 1-35. The last 5 slots are unreachable to the robot in each ML6000 and only become reachable when you add on to it. Anyway, I know the first robot is being inventoried correctly, I can see all the tapes and it reads and reports all their correct bar codes, but it seems like it's not even querying the 2nd robot's drives.

Has anyone else come across this issue? To re-state: the robots are linked together so it seems appropriate that they only report as one robot, or am I mistaken? Should the actually show up as 2 robots? Either way it does show all 4 drives.
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Accepted Solutions

ekim
Level 3
Okay, I spent a good amount of time on line with Dell support after rebooting the Library (the 30 minute post was pushing past 3 hours) and they had me try a couple things. It seems like it's going to come down to faulty hardware. The Dell tech had me disconnect the working unit and change the control paths on the non-working ML6000. It has:

0,1
0,2
-1,4

It was set to -1,4 and the Dell tech said it shouldn't matter which one it was on, but each time I changed it NBU would detect it differently. From 1 drive path and no robot, to 2 and no robot, to 1 and 1 robot, to nothing, and back around until we finally landed on 2 and 1 robot. So I hooked the working unit back up and NBU was able to detect 2 robots and 4 drives. Looks like we are good for now but that shouldn't be occuring at all. We will have a Dell tech come out and test the hardware.

Thanks all for your help.

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6 REPLIES 6

Yasuhisa_Ishika
Level 6
Partner Accredited Certified
I have never experienced with ML6000, but some tape library like Quantum M series have a *stack link* configuration that linked libraries are treated as single library.Your env seems like this.Ask your vendor whether it is configured single or 2 isolated Lin (s). For slot issue, run scan(/usr/openv/volmgr/bin/scan) and check # of slots and media access ports(MAP). MAP are dedicated for media import/export, and can not be used as available slot. If you want to use all the slots, change config of ML6000 to number of MAP(sometimes called as mailslot, import port and so on) set 0.

ekim
Level 3
Well slots are not my issue. I have enough free slots and dont need to use the MAPs. My problem is that I can't seem to get NB to inventory the tapes that are in the slots in the 2nd robot.

`scan` shows all 4 drives with all the same values less the paths (device name: /dev/nst0-3, passthru name: /dev/sg3,2,6,7, respectively) but the section about the robot shows

Number of Drives: 2
Number of Slots: 35

So even though I see all 4 drives in NBU, this reports that there are only 2 drives and 35 slots, which is only correct for the first robot.

ekim
Level 3
Okay, Looking at the back I was mistaken. The second robot is linked with another library with a robot in it so there are 3 total, 2 in the main unit and one in the extended bay, though only the 2 robots in each main unit are hooked up via individual fibre channels directly to the host (4 total). So, technically it should see 2 seperate robots but instead it just shows 1 robot and 4 drives. Again, it only inventories the first robot and reports it only sees 35 slots total. Any ideas??

Stumpr2
Level 6
From GUI select
--> Media and Device management
---->Media
------> Robots
--------> select robot and do a right click  to select (should see all robots)
---------->Inventory Robot...



CY
Level 6
Certified
It seems to me the problem is the LUN mapping on your tape library.

Let me explain this:

So you have the two libraries hooked up to the host via FC.  That's good.

And I believe you did the SAN zoning correctly - otherwise your host can't see all four tape drives.

However, please check your libraries' management console and look for the "FC Host LUN masking" or "FC Host drive mapping" (I am not sure what Dell calls it, but it should be something similar).  Especially check if the the Linux host gets both robotic control LUN (internal to the library) mapped to host's LUN (external to the library).

The robotic control LUN should be LUN0 or LUN1 on your Linux host.  The tape drives should take LUN2 & LUN3.

Just like many of the SAN Storage arrays, when you do zoning, you give the zoned host to see all LUNs by default, but you want to use LUN masking/mapping to limit each host to see only the LUNs assigned to it.  I believe what happened was that you got the 1st library's 3 LUN mapped (robotic control LUN and two tape drive LUNs) but only the two tape drive LUNs mapped for the 2nd library.

After you get the LUN masking/mapping corrected, follow the NetBackup Device Configuration Guide to make sure you get the device files created.  (You may need reboot - I am not familiar with Linux so I can't say if it's necessary)  Afterward, the sgscan or scan command should show two tape "Changer" - i.e. 2 robots.

Hope this helps.

ekim
Level 3
Okay, I spent a good amount of time on line with Dell support after rebooting the Library (the 30 minute post was pushing past 3 hours) and they had me try a couple things. It seems like it's going to come down to faulty hardware. The Dell tech had me disconnect the working unit and change the control paths on the non-working ML6000. It has:

0,1
0,2
-1,4

It was set to -1,4 and the Dell tech said it shouldn't matter which one it was on, but each time I changed it NBU would detect it differently. From 1 drive path and no robot, to 2 and no robot, to 1 and 1 robot, to nothing, and back around until we finally landed on 2 and 1 robot. So I hooked the working unit back up and NBU was able to detect 2 robots and 4 drives. Looks like we are good for now but that shouldn't be occuring at all. We will have a Dell tech come out and test the hardware.

Thanks all for your help.