On 09/22/10 21:14, rmumford wrote:
> Running NW 7.5.2 with Data Domain DD880 in VTL mode. When a backup with 
> several clients kicks off, NW may want to mount 12 or more tapes (tape 
> sessions are set to 1 per data domain). We get several of the red arrows with 
> a message like this: "Device `rd=nt2legatok4.emn.com:\\.\Tape0' is either 
> disabled or in service mode." These are not true as the tape drive is not 
> disabled or in service mode, and if you look further you'll see that the 
> volume it is trying to load is already mounted on another drive and may even 
> be writing at the time. I suspect it has something to do with sessions being 
> set to 1, but I've logged an SR with EMC and they have not yet suggested 
> that. Updating the tape drivers (this is windows 2003 for the server and 
> win2008 for the storage nodes) has not helped. 
> 
> Is anyone else running NW with DD880 VTL, and is anyone else seeing these 
> kinds of messages.? 
> 

I guess you are suffering because you haven't configured your tape
drives with persistent naming. You obviously haven't done this because I
can see your examples use the short name format. You should ALWAYS
configure persistent naming when using tape drives or virtual tape
drives on Windows.

Assuming you are using the Microsoft LTO driver:
Edit the registry and create a DWORD called
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Tape\Persistence and
set it to 1. Then delete all your tape drives in device manager and scan
for new hardware. The drives should get recreated with much longer
persistent names. You will then need to reconfigure the library in
NetWorker.

By the way, do not use the IBM drivers for Windows with a Data Domain
(possibly other VTLs too) because they don't work with persistent
naming. I have proved this - even with the IBM long names set the drives
will still change position in the library. The Microsoft drivers work fine.

The other weird thing that might be happening (that I have also seen) is
that sometimes when there are no more volumes available NetWorker will
try to mount volumes that are already in use. This is just dumb. I am
sure this is a bug, but it can easily be avoided by making sure that
there are plenty of labelled volumes available for use.

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