Drive scan host is not active

[Markus_Bonet]

Hi,

we have an environment where 2 Media Servers and the Master Server share several tape drives (SSO).

Scanability is set for the Master Server to be the scan host.

From time to time we encounter that some drives are all in state "TLD" but the scan host is missing.

I'd like to understand how this can be resolved without having the Master Server to be restarted.

I read through several other topics covering the same question but found nothing except the hint to restart Netbackup on the Master Server.

Thanks

Markus

[Will_Restore]

http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=TECH185408

Cause

 

 

 This NetBackup environment was a mutiple media servers using Shared Storage Option (SSO) to share the tape drives. Some of these media server were down and some of them were in a state - not active for tapes. Scanability factor across these media server was cauing the issue. 

 

Solution

To fix the issue change the scanability factor to "0" for the media server which are down and not active for tape.

Use the "nbemmcmd" command located in admincmd to change the scanability.

Command Syntax:

nbemmcmd -updatehost -machinename <machine_name> -machinetype <type> -masterserver <master server> -scanability <number 0 - 9>

Example:

C:\Program Files\Veritas\NetBackup\bin\Admincmd>nbemmcmd -updatehost -machinename mymediaserver -machinetype media -masterserver mymasterserver -scanability 0

where mymediaserver is the actual media Server hostname and mymasterserver is the actual master server hostname.

[Marianne]

My guess is that the master server may be 'too busy' or lacking resources and/or tuning.

A proper health check by a knowledgeable consultant may be a good idea.

A whole bunch of Media Manager logs will need to be examined to see what is happening when the master server goes 'inactive' as Drive Scan host.

If you want some Performance Tuning documentation, we can provide some links....

[Marianne]

6 weeks later and no response from Markus....

Have a look at this discussion about the same topic: Drive Scan host not active 

You will find a link at the bottom to this Best Practice session at Vision this year: 
NetBackup 7.6 Best Practices: Optimizing Performance

Another good read is the doc in this 'Featured' post: 
Updated NetBackup Backup Planning and Performance Tuning Guide for Release 7.5 and Release 7.6

[Markus_Bonet]

Sorry for replying late (was on leave during this time).

We didn't find a solution so far w/o restarting Netbackup which I was trying to avoid.

The solution for now is to switch the cluster, thus restarting Netbackup.

This is kind of annoying handling the problem this way. And for now we don't encounter the problem anymore, so trying to fix it another way is currently not an option.

But thanks for your support, didn't mean to be rude in any way.

[mph999]

Set scannability of one server that sees a group of drives to 9, and the other servers that share the same group of drive to 5.

See if that help - though it sounds like you may have that already.

[Marianne]

As per my previous post - quite possibly a resource and/or tuning issue.

While issue is not seen at the moment, take your time and go through the Tuning docs mentioned above.