status: 96: unable to allocate new media for backup, storage unit has none available

[Eric-Akash]

Hi Experts,

We did just upgrade from 7.5xx to 7.6.0.4 Netbackup of one client. I am getting below error while running the backup policy. 

Errors-

12/28/2015 18:19:50 - Error bptm (pid=27900) error requesting media, TpErrno = Robot operation failed

12/28/2015 18:19:50 - Warning bptm (pid=27900) media id M028L4 load operation reported an error

12/28/2015 18:19:50 - current media M028L4 complete, requesting next media Any

12/28/2015 18:20:06 - Info bptm (pid=27900) EXITING with status 96 <----------

12/28/2015 18:20:07 - Info bpbkar (pid=26644) done. status: 96: unable to allocate new media for backup, storage unit has none available

12/28/2015 18:20:07 - end writing

unable to allocate new media for backup, storage unit has none available  (96)

I did effort to fix this problem with lot of workaround shared on Forum but no luck yet. 

Also I can see that there is no CL tape can be seen in library. I read somewhere that one possible reason could be that drive is requesting cleaning  tape and there are no cleaning tape available or the cleanings remaining is 0. So how to ensure that this is just happening because of cleaning tape.  

Output from tpclean -

tpclean -L

Drive Name              Type      Mount Time  Frequency   Last Cleaned         Comment

**********              ****      **********  *********   ****************     *******

HP.ULTRIUM4-SCSI.000    hcart*    93.3        0                N/A

HP.ULTRIUM4-SCSI.001    hcart*    1321.3      0                N/A

Please suggest .

Thanks,

[abhinavs]

Hi Eric,

Kindly check if media is available in the selected pool, also check if there is any space available.

If media is available check for retension, cause if multi-retension is not enable backup with different retention failed with 96 error.

[RiaanBadenhorst · Accepted solution]

NetBackup believes that M028L4 is free so it wanted to use it but there was a load operation issue. It could be that there is some issue with the robot or you might have removed that media and not done an inventory. There are no other media available that matcht the requirements for this backup. Try and perform and inventory and take note it there is any change of the location of M028L4. If there is no change it means the real problem is with the robot not being able to load media. But this would show up across all backups, not just one.

[Eric-Akash]

There is no chnage yet, I did the init using robtest and reboot the Tape library. This error is coming for all the tapes that are in that pool. 

Refer the full error log as atached.

//Thanks

[nbutech]

I do not think upgrading the client has caused this issue unless you upgrade the media server itself....

Is it possible to create a test policy for the same client going to a different volume pool and check if it works... ?

[watsons]

I am with Riaan on this, if all the tapes were trying to use the drive which was having issue mounting the tapes, you will need to fix the "robot operation failure". If necessary, reconfigure the drives.

If it's just simply tapes are full, the "robot opeation failure" should not appear and Netbackup gives you a different message.

Other things to check after you fix the failure are:

1) make sure M028L4 is of  hcart density

2) M028L4 is not suspended nor frozen

3) M028L4 does not have a "media expiration" date defined.