Bacula-users

Re: [Bacula-users] LTO3 tape capacity (variable?)

2012-09-25 17:31:44
Subject: Re: [Bacula-users] LTO3 tape capacity (variable?)
From: Cejka Rudolf <cejkar AT fit.vutbr DOT cz>
To: bacula-users AT lists.sourceforge DOT net
Date: Tue, 25 Sep 2012 23:29:35 +0200
Stephen Thompson wrote (2012/09/25):
> The tape in question have only been used once or twice.

Do you mean just one or two drive loads and unloads?

> The library is a StorageTek whose SLConsole reports no media (or drive) 
> errors, though I will look into those linux-based tools.

There are several types of errors, recoverable and non-recoverable, and
I'm afraid that you see just non-recoverable, but it is too late to see
them.

> Our Sun/Oracle service engineer claims that our drives do not require 
> cleaning tapes.  Does that sound legit?

If you are interested, you can study
http://www.tarconis.com/documentos/LTO_Cleaning_wp.pdf ;o)
So in HP case, it is possible to agree. However, you still
have to have atleast one cleaning cartridge prepared ;o)

> Our throughput is pretty reasonable for our hardware -- we do use disk 
> staging and get something like 60Mb/s to tape.

HP LTO-3 drive can slow down physical speed to 27 MB/s, IBM LTO-3
to 40 MB/s. Native speed is 80 MB/s, bot all these speeds are after
compression. If you have 60 MB/s before compression and there are
some places with somewhat better compression than 2:1, then you are not
able to feed HP LTO-3. For IBM drive, it is suffucient to have places
with just 2:1 to need repositions.

> Lastly, the tapes that get 200 vs 800 are from the same batch of tapes, 
> same number of uses, and used by the same pair of SL500 drives.  That's 
> primarily why I wondered if it could be data dependent (or a bacula bug).

And what about the reason to switch to the next tape? Do you have something
like this in your reports?

22-Sep 02:22 backup-sd JobId 74990: End of Volume "1" at 95:46412 on device 
"drive0" (/dev/nsa0). Write of 65536 bytes got 0.
22-Sep 02:22 backup-sd JobId 74990: Re-read of last block succeeded.
22-Sep 02:22 backup-sd JobId 74990: End of medium on Volume "1" 
Bytes=381,238,317,056 Blocks=5,817,238 at 22-Sep-2012 02:22.

Do not you use something from the following things in bacula configuration?
    UseVolumeOnce
    Maximum Volume Jobs
    Maximum Volume Bytes
    Volume Use Duration
?

-- 
Rudolf Cejka <cejkar at fit.vutbr.cz> http://www.fit.vutbr.cz/~cejkar
Brno University of Technology, Faculty of Information Technology
Bozetechova 2, 612 66  Brno, Czech Republic

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