Storage Units - usage for tape drives?

[Robert-J]

I am puzzled about storage units and tape drives.  If you have max jobs per client setup OK i.e. no restrictions and concurrent drives set-up matching what you expect for the STU  I still get job queuing watching for tape drives.  Example - If you have:

• 6 tape drives and one storage unit with 6 concurrent drive the storage can use all six drives.
• Three policies that would only use two tapes drives each when run at different times.

If you give the policies all the same storage unit that contains all the tape drives.  It looks like the first policy that starts using that 6 drive storage  stops the other policy from accessing any of the six drives even though its only using 2 drives.   Is that what is happening when  the second policy says its waiting on tape drives?

[RiaanBadenhorst]

Thats odd, what you're describing should happen if there are multiple media servers i.e. media server 1 would lock 6 drives with its storage unit, then media server 2 can't use the drives. This shouldn't happen on 1 single media server with a single storage unit.

Unless I'm missing something today.

Do you have enough scratch media?

[Mark_Solutions]

definately shouldnt happen!

Can we see the output of bpstulist -L and also confirm that there are plenty of available tapes in the library (for the volume pools involved)

It would be useful to see the output of bppllist -L -allpolicies as well - probaly as text file attachments?

Thanks

[J_H_Is_gone]

1) you can limit how many jobs can run per client  (client att in master server properties) - if a client is only allowed 2 any jobs over 2 active will queue

2) Storage unit - you can limit how many drives can be use - and how may max concurrent writes per drive.  Say 2 drive - 10 mas concurrent = 20 jobs  any jobs over 20 will queue

3) policy  you can limit the number of jobs per policy that are allowed to run at once.  if the policy is set to 10 - any streams over 10 will queue

4) Global max jobs per client - this can also limit the number of jobs each client is allowed to run at once - if the client is not set by #1 then any jobs more than this number for a client will queue

5) volume pool - Max number of  partially full Media. - if you only allow 2 partially full media they it may only use 2 tapes and wait for 1 to fill up before it will use another.

You have to look at all these things and work them together.

The best way to find out which one is causing it - on your GUI activity monitor add the column "state details"  this will tell you why a job is queued.  If the job is already done you can look at the details of the job and it will say in there why it was waiting.