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NetBackup not detecting the tapes

Shahul1412
Level 2

Hello All,

Tapes were inserted in to the library. But I couldn't able to detect the tapes in netbackup console after running inventory and robtest. What could be the reason? Tried re-inserting the tapes in different slots also. Still no luck.

1 ACCEPTED SOLUTION

Accepted Solutions

Marianne
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You need to show us what you see.
And please remember to tell us what the make and model is of your library and if your library has been partitioned.
Does your library have a web gui?

In my 18 years with NetBackup, I have never seen tapes 'disappear'.
The "NIL" slot number says that NBU believes that the tapes have been moved out of the robot .

Please show us output of robtest commands such as
s p
s s

and 
vmcheckxxx -rt tld -rn 0 
(assuming robot type is tld and robot nuber is 0)

Volume group simply represents location and media type.
Changes to location therefore has no effect on the data stored on the tapes.

See this TN for good explanation of volume groups:
http://www.veritas.com/docs/000121459

 

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9 REPLIES 9

RamNagalla
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what is the tape library model? does the tape library has logical library configured? if yes did you allocated the new tapes to the logical library that is configured for this Netbackup master server?

also does robtest is giving any error messages?

Marianne
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Please remember that robtest is simply reporting what the robot sees. So, it is the robot not seeing the tapes, not NBU.

I think that Ram is correct. The robot is probably partitioned and the tapes are in a different partition.

I would start with the robot admin GUI/web page, to see if the robot has registered the tapes.

Be aware that some robots need an inventory run from the GUI/web page to show inserted tapes.

The standard questions: Have you checked: 1) What has changed. 2) The manual 3) If there are any tech notes or VOX posts regarding the issue

Nicolai
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Some robots has reserved tape slot used for diagnostic, if you put media in theses slots they will not appear in Netbackup.

Marianne
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Wondering if @Shahul1412 has seen all the attempts to help.... ? 

mph999
Level 6
Employee Accredited

.... and cleaning tapes slots

mph999
Level 6
Employee Accredited

As mentioned already, NBU never 'looks' for tapes in the library, it is always 'told' what tapes are there.

Altough we run an 'inventory' from NBU, again this is in fact a 'Dear Library, what tapes do you have and where are they' command.

Therefore, when tapes are not 'seen', it's down to the library hiding them from us for what ever reason.

These reasons include:

License issues - some tape libraries, you have to license the slots, so if you have a license for 100 slots, but put in 200 tapes, you will only ever see half of them.

Partition issues - many physical libaries can be partitioned into 'multiple' libraries, and each of these 'partitioned' libraries appear to NBU as a totally seperate library. In reality, you are talking to the library firmware, and this is doing all the clever stuff to make the libraries appear seperate (in fact, you have kind of turned your physical library into a VTL .... - ok, the tapes are still physical as opposed to disk, but the rest is effectivly virtual).  So fo all this to work, you usually have to assign the library slots to a particular partition, if this is not done, the slots will not be visible.

Virtual I/O slots - some libraries have virtual I/O slots.  This extends the physical CAP/ MAP, which mights have, for this example, 10 slots.  With virtual I/O, you can eject more tapes than the physical CAP/ MAP an hold, lets say 20 tapes.  From teh backup software side, the eject is completed immediately, 10 tapes will be in the physical CAP/ MAP, and 10 tapes will be in virual I/O.  Once the CAP/ MAP is emptied, the libary moves the other 10 tapes from virtual I/O to the physical CAP/ MAP.  The physical I/O slots are invisible to the backup software, so any tapes in these slots will not show up.  The bigger IBM libraries have this feature, but it may well be available on other makes as well.

Poor barcode labels - If the physical barcodes stuck on the tapes are not of a high enough quality (typically seen with self-printed labels) the barcodes will not be visible.

Robtest is the tool to use for this - within robtest the 's s' (show slots) command should list all the tapes in the library.  If they are missing, you have a library issue, not a NBU issue.

Hope the above helps.

At first time the tape got inserted, I could able to locate in GUI under robots. But the other day it went disappeared. I tried to re-seat the disk in different slots also. Still it's not showing in netbackup library.

The thing is that I could able to locate the tape under media section in GUI. But the slot number shows NIL and the volume group is different when compared to other tapes loaded in robots. So will it show any difference if I right click on that tape and select the move option to change the volume group and assigning a random slot number which is not being used?

I am afraid moving volume group will lose data or not. Please advice.

Marianne
Moderator
Moderator
Partner    VIP    Accredited Certified

You need to show us what you see.
And please remember to tell us what the make and model is of your library and if your library has been partitioned.
Does your library have a web gui?

In my 18 years with NetBackup, I have never seen tapes 'disappear'.
The "NIL" slot number says that NBU believes that the tapes have been moved out of the robot .

Please show us output of robtest commands such as
s p
s s

and 
vmcheckxxx -rt tld -rn 0 
(assuming robot type is tld and robot nuber is 0)

Volume group simply represents location and media type.
Changes to location therefore has no effect on the data stored on the tapes.

See this TN for good explanation of volume groups:
http://www.veritas.com/docs/000121459