Veritas-bu

[Veritas-bu] Interesting Things w/ SSO on a Fibre Tape SAN (Win2k)

2002-06-17 12:13:49
Subject: [Veritas-bu] Interesting Things w/ SSO on a Fibre Tape SAN (Win2k)
From: prasadcm AT optonline DOT net (Prasad Chalikonda)
Date: Mon, 17 Jun 2002 12:13:49 -0400
I was working on a similiar setup last week.

Compaq DL 580's with Gig Ethernet card. The card was behaving strangely, 
would actually choke and cease network activity in the middle of a 
backup. Turned out the GE driver had to an Intel driver, if you are 
using non Compaq network switches.

HTH

Prasad.


Anderson, David wrote:

> First off, I'll apologize for being long winded, but this is too good NOT to
> share.
> 
> Our environment:
> All brand new hardware
> - two Compaq ProLiant ML530's, dual CPU, 1.1 G memory
> - Windows 2000
> - Master Server also acting as a Media Server
> - StorageTek L180 (4 Drives, also tried a Compaq MSL5026 (2 drives) all SDLT
> - Compaq 8EL Fibre Switch, Compaq Modular Data Router (SCSI bridge)
> - We had started with NBU 3.4.1 and in desperation, installed 4.5 (the one
> with SCSI Reserve/Release).
> (by the way, if you're a Windows shop, do the 4.5, and to heck with Motif!)
> 
> We have been having a lot of problems with drives randomly dropping off
> line.  The libraries all saw a "SCSI Bus Rewind" request, so dropped
> whatever it was doing and waited for the actual command to rewind (which
> would never come).  There was literally nothing that we didn't try.  With
> marginal support from any of the vendors by the way, except StorageTek.
> 
> There seemed to be no correlation between events in NetBackup or issues
> directly related to the hardware.  Over the past (many) weeks, we did notice
> that we had occasional network problems.  Specifically, the Master and Media
> servers deciding to not communication on the Gigabit Ethernet LAN.  We
> originally had Compaq Gig-NIC's, but they seemed to be having a lot of
> packet over-run problems, among others.  We have installed the 3Com card
> instead.  This helped, but did not resolve the issues.
> 
> Finally, one of our guys started thinking about SSO being able to
> communicate with itself, server to server to coordinate the SCSI
> Reserve/Release function.  With this in mind, he installed a second NIC (yes
> the original Compaq card) and set the hosts tables so that the Master and
> Media servers would use only the dedicated channel to communicate.
> 
> We have now run for three days, including a full weekend running over 1500
> separate small jobs.  No a single problem.  I'll admit that it is still too
> early to put this matter to bed just yet, but this solution looks very
> promising at this point.
> 
> Has anyone else seen problems of this sort?
> 
> David Anderson
> ScrippsHealth Information Services
> 
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