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Wizard does not see tape drives

GHas
Level 4

 

Seasons Greetings Everyone,

I have the following problem I am trying to resolve:

Basic Facts:

- Server is running Windows Server 2003

- Veritas NetBackup 6.5 (Plan to upgrade theis year)

- Quantum Scalar i6000 storage unit

- When running the Device configuration Wizard the following occurs

- Robot 0 is found and passes diags but none of the four drives acan be selected:

 

O Robot 0 <server> ADIC Scalar i2000 655Q

Drive 1 (unused element address)

Drive 2 (unused element address)

Drive 3 (unused element address)

Drive 4 (unused element address)

 

Everything was running well until the firmware was upgraded to 655Q.GS10201 which suggests incompatiblilty with the Windows OS.

Another Scalar i6000 was upgraded without any problem, BUT it uses a unix server.

Has anyone ever come accross a similar problem?

 

Any ideas or suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

Have A Happy New Year  !!!!

 

 

 

 

1 ACCEPTED SOLUTION

Accepted Solutions

Amol_Nair
Level 6
Employee
Just read your post once again and realized that the answer to your question actually lies in your post itself. You have mentioned that the drivers are not compatible with windows

Everything was running well until the firmware was upgraded to 655Q.GS10201 which suggests incompatiblilty with the Windows OS. <\i>

When windows itself cant recognize the drives how will netbackup use them.?

View solution in original post

8 REPLIES 8

D_Flood
Level 6

Since this is Windows, you have to have everything happy in Device Manager (aka Device Mangler) first.  My guess is that the firmware update caused the existing Device Manager entries to not match up 100% anymore.

Have you tried removing/uninstalling all the tape devices from Device Manager and rebooting?  Or, if the tape MFG has an exe that installs the drivers you might try running it again to allow it to reinstall everything.

I've got an IBM TS3500 series library and I know any time I have to do anything related to it on my legacy NetBackup system (that's just around until the last tape expires) it takes multiple tries under Windows 2003 to get the Device Manager happy...

 

watsons
Level 6

Since the change you know it's the firmware upgrade, you may want to get the Netbackup device mapping update as well, download its latest copy and apply it according to the guidelines:

http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH77988

mph999
Level 6
Employee Accredited
'Unused element address' - I suspect this is related to the library not knowing it has tape drives installed - best call the library vendor. I don't think this issue is anything to do with Windows or NetBackup. I suspect that the output of 'scan' , the changer part won't show the drives (the changer section of scan should list the drives in the robot). They will either be missing, or some of the information for them will be incorrect.

Amol_Nair
Level 6
Employee
The tape drive drivers need to be updated on windows. Since you are using netbackup 6.5 i would suggest using Symantec drivers instead of vendor drivers. For the unused element address you can refer to the below technote http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH45828 Unfortunately the link at the end of the technote is not available.

Amol_Nair
Level 6
Employee
Just read your post once again and realized that the answer to your question actually lies in your post itself. You have mentioned that the drivers are not compatible with windows

Everything was running well until the firmware was upgraded to 655Q.GS10201 which suggests incompatiblilty with the Windows OS. <\i>

When windows itself cant recognize the drives how will netbackup use them.?

mph999
Level 6
Employee Accredited
It seems that there are multiple possible causes to 'unused element address' - robot issues and tape drivers. This post shows a similar issue, problem was with the library https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/forums/missing-or-empty-drive-black-box-activity-monitor This one, again, nothing to do with drivers ... https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/forums/robotic-drives-detected-under-standalone If you only upgraded the library firmware and not the tape drives, I would image that this is more of a library issue, than tape drive driver as if you haven't changed the tape drive firmware, it should still be happy with the existing drivers - unless of course the existing drivers are having some sort of issue with the new library firmware,

GHas
Level 4

To all, thanks for your input!

A couple of additional notes:

There are two backup servers (both running Windows Server 2003) that use the i6000, and both have the same problem symptoms after the "upgrade":

http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=TECH45828

I am searching for applicable driver upgrade and also trying to determine if the i6000 firmware upgrade is compatible with the NetBackup 6.5 we are running.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

GHas
Level 4

Update:

One problem has been resolved for one of the servers.

The Auto Configuration Wizard was selecting the latest version driver which resulted in a compatibility problem. 

The problem was resolved by deleting every drive and then manually installing and selecting an older version drive that worked!

The other server does not yet see the the drives assigned to it, not yet sure why.