Drives will up but after a few minutes go back down

[Annan]

Hello

We are experiencing the same issue as in this post:

https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/forums/ndmp-drive-down-and-cannot

drives will up but after a few minutes go back down.

Is the any advice out there for this issue?

[Marianne]

Annan

Please tell us more about your environment.

Is your issue with NDMP drives as well?

Or on NBU Master and/or Media server?

NBU version?

Master and/or Media server OS?

NDMP make/model?

Because NBU needs the OS for device access and I/O, troubleshooting needs to start at OS level.

[Mark_Solutions]

One of the most frequest causes of this is tape changing proceedures when users change tapes by remving magazines whilst tapes are mounted in the drives

A tape is dedicated to a slot in the library so if it slot gets filled by a tape change it cannot be ejected from the drive so the drive gets set down again

use robtest to see if there are tapes in the drives and which slot they belong to ( s d) and then check to see if their slots are full ( s s)

If so move the tape to an empty slot (m d1 s 22 or similar) and then update the inventory

It could of course be one of many other issues so give us as much detail as possible for us to assist further

[Annan]

Hello Marianne

The issue is on 2 servers and started after an issue with the remote site, this was resolved by recreating the IPSEC service.

Master server

Server 2003 R2 SP2

NB 7.1.0.3

Adic i500

8 LTO3 drives TLD NDMP <multiple>

Drive path <multiple>

EMC Celerra NS-120 (NMDP VM and data stores)

Remote site

Server 2003 R2 SP2

NB 7.1.0.3

Adic FastStor 2.1

1 LTO3 drive TLD

Drive path <multiple>

[Marianne · Accepted solution]

The best way to troubleshoot DOWN drives is to add VERBOSE  entry to vm.conf on all media servers.
(in <install-path>\veritas\volmgr) and restart NBU Device Manager.
NBU will now log additional Device/Media Manager activity to Event Viewer System and Application logs.
Reason for DOWN drives can then be seen in Application log on the Media server.

Create <install-path>\veritas\netbackup\logs\bptm log folder as well to troubleshoot I/O errors.

Have a look at this TN:

How Symantec NetBackup determines if a tape should be frozen or the status of a tape drive should be changed to down, and how to change this behaviour
http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH9748