Virtual Tape Library Robot not detected by Netbackup

[mtimbol]

Need help.

Background:
We manage a Netbackup Master server which has several media servers.
The media servers are at different locations and backup to a Virtual tape Library and then duplicate to a standalone tape drive.

Problem:

This was working fine. One day, on one media server, backup failed with job status 196 - client backup was not attempted because backup window closed.
Upon checking the Detailed status - Robotic library is down on server. However, the drives are up when you check the Drives tab in the Activity monitor.
Under Devices > Robots > The robotic path column says "missing path".

Troubleshooting performed.

- I Logged in to the media server and have confirmed that the robot is detected as Media changer and drives are detected in the Device manager.
- The virtual library has 5 drives. I Have tried to rescan, to make sure it is detected, it is. No exclamation poin in the device manager.
- I have also tried restarting the ISCSI service.
- From the ISCSI initiator, I have tried disconnecting and reconnecting the drives.
- I also tried deleting the medium change from the device manager and re-scanning for it to appear again.
- In Netbackup console > media servers > I stopped then started the device manager on the problematic media server. Still missing path. Cannot even run "diagnose" on the robot.
- I deleted the Robot and the drives and tried to reconfigure them using the device configuration wizard. But only the drives are detected, the robot is not.
- Also, the wizard mistakenly recognizes one drive as a robot but the state is unconfigured. If I proceed, it will assign all the drives in the robot as standalone drives.
- I tried to manually add the robot by going to devices, robots but it only sees the tape drive that is beign mistaken for a robot and even if I try to proceed with

selecting that, it shows and error - ".. Device path is already in use(22)".
- I've also logged in to the D2d device, there are no errors. I've tried restarting the D2d device as well.
- On the Event viewer, there is an error in the Netbackup TLD Daemon that says "TLD(8) unavailable: initialization failed. Unable to open robotic path".
- Still on evnet viewer, there is another error from Netbackup TLD Control Daemon - "TLD(8) [6408] Could not find SCSI coordinates MISSING PATH:CZJ22819TY in the

registry. CZJ22819TY is the serial of the virtual robot. This does not show up among the devices detected by netbackup when I try to configure the robot and drives whether by wizard or manually.

Nebackup version - 7.1
Master Server OS version - Server 2008 R2 Enterprise 64bit
Media Server OS version -  Server 2008 R2 Standard SP1 64bit
Virtual Tape Library is hosted on an HP StorageWorks D2D4106i-G02-E device.

[revarooo]

Delete the robot and reconfigure, if the robot is not picked up then the OS does not see it anymore. You can confirm this by running: scan -changer  (which is under volmgr/bin).

If that is the case, check your zoning.

[Marianne]

Please show us output of ...\volmgr\bin\scan command.

[NathanNieman]

I have had a issue like this.

I had to delete, reinstall the drivers for the robot etc, and then reboot and reconfigure.  

That seemed to take care of the issue for me.

[Mark_Solutions]

I see you have done a lot of delete aand re-scan etc. but as with all devices on Windows it is best after any changes to reboot the media server to re-connect to a device properly, even though it is an iSCSI one

I would delete everything in NetBackup, reboot the servers, make sure all drivers are loaded correctly (install and reboot again if needs be - do reboot if you install a new driver), re-start the services on the Master and then re-run the device wizard

See if that clears it up a little

[mtimbol · Accepted solution]

I ran \volmgr\bin\scan. The medium changer was not showing up. There was a drive that was being recognized as a changer.

The rest of the drives showed up.

I was told by Symantec to stop netbackup services, go to \Program Files\Veritas\Volmgr\misc and delete files with the word "lock". I found several and deleted them, rebooted the media server and that seems to have fixed the problem.  So I'm not sure if it was just the reboot or the deletion of the files below or both.

09/23/2013  05:36 PM                16 tld.lock.MISSING_PATHCZJ22819TY.-1.-1.-1

09/20/2013  04:33 PM                16 tld.lock.ndmp.MISSING_PATH.CZJ22819TY

07/25/2013  04:40 AM                16 tld.lock.{4,0,5,0}.-1.-1.-1

09/20/2013  08:34 PM                16 tldcd.lock

09/20/2013  04:31 PM                16 vmd.lock