Hello Ravi

What I'd like to know is the error incidents correlated with usage by Netbackup
and with which tapes.

The OS based messages are nice but they still need to be correlated in order to
get a reasonable picture of what's happening.   In the old days, SunOS 4.x had
sundiag that was real useful for burning in drives and basically verifying if
the drive really was the problem;  seem to remember someone telling me the
Solaris equivalent once, but it escapes me now.

I'm not trying to diss Netbackup since it does seem to be quite functional.
It's just that the features I mentioned do not seem to be explicitly addressed
or documented and I would've expected them to have been.   Features like being
able to put the schedule on hold is a pretty basic feature of any queue control,
even lpd could do that but I can't seem to find a clean way of doing that in
Netbackup.   Conditional expiration would seem to be a pretty basic requirement
once you have the concept of incrementals of any kind and the ability to create
redundant copies on different tapes without having to go through a duplication
process is also a pretty basic backup concern hence the Towers of Hanoi
mentioned in most books on backups.    The most fundamental issue with anything
to do with tape is of course, hardware failure, having started my computer
career by trying to keep 9 track tape drives with manufacture dates older than
my own alive, I consider good hardware statistics to be a definite plus.

Regards,
John I Wang
Sr. Systems Engineer
Steverson Information Professionals

---
Enron Broadband Services
Enron Building 1472c
ph (713) 345-4291
fax (713) 646-8063


|--------+--------------------------->
|        |          ravi.channavajhal|
|        |          a AT csfb DOT com       |
|        |                           |
|        |          11/02/00 01:37 PM|
|        |                           |
|--------+--------------------------->
  >-------------------------------------------------------------------|
  |                                                                   |
  |       To:     John Wang/Contractor/Enron Communications@Enron     |
  |       Communications                                              |
  |       cc:     veritas-bu AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu                   |
  |       Subject:     Re: [Veritas-bu] Veritas Netbackup vs Tivoli   |
  |       (ADSM)                                                      |
  >-------------------------------------------------------------------|



As for drive specifif logging, what appears in /var/adm/messages
isn't sufficient? (OK, I'm assuming you are using Solaris..cant speak
for other platforms).  Usually if there is a SCSI error, it prints what
type of failure read/write and the ASC code etc.,  We usually parse
all the critical errors from /var/adm/messages and send a nice page
or e-mail.

As for retries on another drive, you have the ability to mark a
drive as down, and if I'm not netbackup gives up on a drive too..

-ravi

On Thu, 2 Nov 2000 John_Wang AT enron DOT net wrote:

John>Lack of drive specific logging.  I'd like to look at read and
John>write errors by drive in order to pick up on failing hardware.
John>It would also be nice to be able to have automatic retries on
John>another drive with subsequent reporting since that would
John>indicate a drive problem or a media problem.