Issue mounting tape in tape drives?

Colin

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PREDATAR Control23

Hi All,

We have two TSM servers and are in the middle of a migration from a older 6.3.4.0 server which is tied to a Dell 6030 tape library (Currently has two drives assigned) and a newer 7.1.3.0 server which also has two drives assigned to said tape library.

We are moving from tape to disk on the new server and have already migrated all of the data to some storage pools on our new device type filedisk. Because of this I wanted to move the two other tape drives back to the older TSM server to help with the export and migration of our tape based nodes to the new server and onto disk.

This is where I came into a few issues:

After moving the SAS cables for the tape drives from the new server to the old the old server stopped seeming to be able to work correctly with the tape library.

For example when I try a "move data (volnumber)" it trys to mount a tape. The library actually moves the tape and puts it in the drive. Then the process just sits there waiting for the tape to mount and eventually fails out. I have tried hard-resetting the tape library and the server and to no avail. Both the paths and drives seem to be online:

TSM>
q path
Source Name Source Type Destination Name Destination Type On-Line
TSM SERVER ML6030LB LIBRARY Yes
TSM SERVER TAPE0 DRIVE Yes
TSM SERVER TAPE1 DRIVE Yes
TSM>
q drive
Library Name Drive Name Device Type On-Line
ML6030LB TAPE0 LTO Yes
ML6030LB TAPE1 LTO Yes


On another note when I try to add one of the other tape drives that I have just moved over from the newer server I get "An I/O error has occurred" which seems odd.

Any advice or ideas would be appreicated.

Older server is RHEL5, newer server is Win2012R2


Also please let me know if I have posted this in the wrong location to be answered. Thanks.
 
PREDATAR Control23

Dell ML6030, LT0 5 tapes and drives. Drives are showing as ULTRIUM-TD5 firmware D8D4
 
PREDATAR Control23

Updated the above post to reflect type of drives after finding them.
 
PREDATAR Control23

I beleive so. As I mentioned I have never moved/removed the two tape librarys that are currently tied in to TSM. Then again with my limited knowledge of RHEL5 I am not sure if they are configured correct. I do know they were working correctly before I moved the other two tape drives to the older TSM server. But now even with those two new drives disconnected physically from the old server I can't seem to get the two existing ones to work correctly again.
 
PREDATAR Control23

Alright thanks. Although I am not 100% sure it is a problem with how they are mounted. I think it might have something to do with the library itself or inside the actual TSM application.
 
PREDATAR Control23

I have no idea how DELL libraries work, just thinking about IBM libraries, I would say maybe check what is status of your library - whether you still have two logical libraries there, what is drive assignment, how many control paths you have(vs what's recommended for it), and so on. Also maybe check what library is saying in it's logs, status views and such.
Although you wrote you have currently all four drives assigned to old server, the output doesn't seem to match that - maybe that's also something to check.
 
PREDATAR Control23

Another thought - check what tape devices you have on Linux (both drives and media changers, and what devices do your paths point to. I don't really have idea how it works with SAS, no experience with that.
 
PREDATAR Control23

First question: The is one control path for the original two drives over drive one. It looks like the library is still logically divided into two for the two different servers. Although I can give the other half of the library back to the older tsm server there really isn't much point because I will be completely migrating off of tape as soon as I get all 4 drives working with the old server.

Until I fix the original two drives attached to the old server I have unplugged the other two drives from it and I assume they are sitting in limbo somewhere at the time but I don't know if that would impact the two drives associated with the old server. I will see what logs I can dig up from the library but it doesn't seem to go into much detail. I also have some tapes that are not tied to either system it appears after having been deleted from the newer system after migrating data off of them.

Also please note that I have just recently been exposed to TSM because our previous backup admin was literally fired and had no documentation on any of this so I am learning as I go here. Forgive any nubeness.

It does look that I am using the IBM tape driver because I see the two tape drives as /dev/ibmtape0 and 1
 
PREDATAR Control23

on that note when I physically connect the two other drives, I see them as /dev/ibmtape2 and 3 in /dev
 
PREDATAR Control23

Well what I'm wondering about is whether your problem may be that some of the paths in TSM point to devices in Linux other than you may thing, which could be due to OS state. I'm familiar with SAN-attached drives though, so I can't really give much advice on SAS-attached - with SAN, I would say rescan the host bus adapters and check the WWPN's to make sure what's what(for both drive and control path devices) but with SAS, one would need to look into manual and then check on the system (and I don't have any system where I could check SAS, so you'll need to do it). The scenario I'm wondering about that after the other two drives were attached temporarily, something was left behind that's now messing your attempt to use just original configuration.
I think for Linux there are two tape drivers, and you need to use correct one and make sure the other (if installed) doesn't interfere, though if you haven't changed anything, there shouldn't be a problem there - unless there was some post-reboot procedure that former admin had and you don't.
Other thing that comes to mind is to try to see if there are any errors anywhere on the system and if they are, try to go from there.
If above doesn't help, I'm afraid I can't advise but to dig into the documentation - for tape library, for SAS-attachment and for particular Linux driver you are using. Consider it good opportunity to get familiar with the system ;)
 
PREDATAR Control23

Good news is I got the drives to all 4 mount and what not be removing all the drives and paths and re-adding them (including the library) but I seem to still be not able to actually mount tapes even though when I send a command via TSM it moves the tape to the drive. Totally lost on what to do after having made sure all my scsi mounts line up correctly and I was able to add them.

I also recently found out that my boss before moving the two new tape drives older deleted the tape library partition that was assigned to the windows server (new server) because it wasn't needed anymore. Than, in addition to the tape drive move, seemed to be what sparked this problem. Now on the library it is telling me it has un-assigned tapes but even with that being the case it seems odd that would break anything for the other library.

Unless he did something like deleted the wrong library, but I doubt that highly but can't really know for sure based on the crappy partition naming conventions.

Any thoughts on the mounting issue? Any debug / check commands I can run in TSM or if anyone has experience with an ML6030? Thanks,
 
PREDATAR Control23

Now it doesn't seem to even by moving the tapes anymore. Sigh.
 
PREDATAR Control23

Looks like it is working now. Combination of problems with the EKM server and someone had an open diagnostic login on the Library. Fun times. Thank you everyone for your input.
 
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