Urgent help please issue with Robot(drive path etc..)

[JaquesC]

Hi there,

Things failing left and right and going from bad to worse, I have an individual physical media server with a DELL ML6000 attached via FC directly to it, its not shared its standalone media and robot.

I have gotten drive path issues before, but a simple reboot of the server normally resolved it, but now this didnt work so started troubleshooting, ended up deleteting/removing the robot completely from master, and followed a few white papers in terms of scanning for resources holding the robot, doing a rescan, doing a re-add of the robot etc...

Now the entire robot is gone, cannot seem to pick it up anymore, and when I do a scan with volmgr/bin/scan It does pick up all 4 LT04 drives in the robot, but doesnt deem this as a robot, instead invidivual drives??

I also get an error message about one device when I do a scan complaining about "access denied" see attached picture.

I am lost now the media server doesnt seem to recognize this as a robotic library anymore, instead individual drives.

[mph999 · Accepted solution]

Forget NBU, it's an issue between the robot and OS.

I presume you have deleted the devices from window itself in device manager (check for any ghosts also) and rebooted.

The robot may/ may not then appear in device manager.  If it does but doesn;t show up in scan, you have a robot/ san  issue - the fact it appears shows there is at least connectivity but it isn't responding to the scsi command that scan sends (which effectivly is all scan does, sends scsi commands to the devices seen by the os, heence why I sad forget NBU, scan doesn't use NBU).

If the above matches, and the san shows no errors I would suggest it's time to call your support guys for the library.

If, after clearing the device from windows + reboot the library doesnt appar at all, then it could still be a llibrary issue, but a san issue is also 'more possible' than if it didn't appear.

I'm not sure if this library has a separate connection to the changer, or if the chager is accessed via a contol path from one of the drives, in which case this could be a setting on the library itself - no control path = no changer.  Additionally, if there is a control path using a drive whch has a fault it could also be lost, though I'd expect  the drive to disappear as well.

So in summary, the first question is 'what does the OS see'

[JaquesC]

Resolved, it was infact on the OS level as you stated thanks, did a reinstall of all devices under device manager, reboot and readd, readd the robot to master all is well.

[Marianne]

Please help us understand why you are trying to verify ndmp hostname? 

Have you checked Windows Event Viewer System and Application log for errors? HBA or device errors will be logged in System log.

Which Windows version - 2003 or 2008?

*** EDIT ***

I only saw your update after posting...

You need to find out why OS has lost connectivity as this seems to be a 'regular' issue:
x2 Media servers, 1 Robot, intermittent issues with path/comm's
Download hba tools for the hba that is used for device access and ensure persistend binding is done to prevent loss of devices at OS level.