Veritas-bu

[Veritas-bu] RE: Veritas-bu digest, Vol 1 #1990 - 3 msgs

2003-03-03 17:19:03
Subject: [Veritas-bu] RE: Veritas-bu digest, Vol 1 #1990 - 3 msgs
From: thoke AT northpeak DOT com (Tim Hoke)
Date: Mon, 3 Mar 2003 16:19:03 -0600 (CST)
Hmmm...

Well, NBU does work in SSO with TapeAlert, as long as the drives support
it.

tpautoconf -t will show if they do or not.

Frequency based cleaning doesn't (as noted) work in SSO.

IF however, you are going to use Library based (Since tapealert might not
work), then make sure to disable tape alert within NetBackup....

On each media server:

touch /usr/openv/volmgr/database/NO_TAPEALERT

Then restart the daemons.

And make sure you are at 3.4_4 or 4.5_1

-Tim
thoke AT northpeak DOT com

On Mon, 3 Mar 2003, Paul Bleimeyer wrote:

> > From: "vidit kohli" <vidit_k AT hotmail DOT com>
> > Subject: [Veritas-bu] 9840 drive cleaning in L700
> 
> > I have setup Netbackup 3.4 to control 9840 drive cleaning in
> > L700, but
> > problem is that it don't work as required.
> > [my understanding was that when ever any drive needs cleaning
> > , netbackup
> > will perform before next backup starts for that 9840 drive]
> >
> > I have two cleaning media in the slots detected by media manager,
> > also tpclean -c option does manual clean fine
> >
> > Please advise if I'm missing any settings?
> >
> 
> 
> Vidit,
> 
> I am going to reply here since I faced the same thing as you about a year
> ago
> and this might help someone else out as well if they read the archives later
> on.
> 
> You mentioned in an email to me that you had SSO enabled on your media and
> master
> servers. The reason I asked this is because we did the same thing. Same
> problems too!
> 
> In an SSO environment with an L700 you want the library to clean the tape
> drives and not have veritas handle it. The reason is that frequency base
> tape cleaning and tape alert fails under environments using SSO with
> veritas. The library should be made responsible for cleaning the drives.
> This is not totally clear in the Veritas documentation when referencing SSO
> environments. At least the last time I looked it was a little sparse.
> 
> So what the heck is going on then? Why does it fail under SSO and not
> others?
> Here is why. It has to do with the tape cleaning and usage counter getting
> reset.
> When you first media server mounts the tape and starts using the drive, then
> the counter on usage in the drive starts running. For example, you run about
> 10 tapes through this same drive via the
> same media server all weekend long during a full. The last tape unmounts and
> the veritas
> media server notifies your master that it is done with the drive and the
> drive is released.
> At this point your tape drive has a usage counter for the amount of time
> this drive
> has been in use. Now veritas is currently setup to detect this and will
> attempt to clean
> the drives. Everything looks great right?
> 
> Here is where SSO gets in the mix. Now along comes media server number 2.
> 
> It has a number of policies/classes it is supposed to run as
> well and starts allocating drives. Including the one your first media server
> just got done
> using. As soon as it connects to the tape drive that media server 1 was just
> using, it
> resets the tape usage/cleaning counter on the drive and the veritas job for
> cleaning
> never fires. Not good.
> 
> So how do we fix this behavior? With SSO in the mix you want to make sure
> that the library itself handles this process for you. Now this gets a little
> bit interesting as well, since some of the prior releases of firmware on the
> L700 didn't always handle this properly as well.
> 
> Here is a link from support about the version issues:
> http://seer.support.veritas.com/docs/240940.htm
> 
> So once you get the veritas jobs disabled, now you want to go to the front
> panel of your l700 or
> you can do this remotely if you have the horizon code installed for remote
> support as well.
> You want to select the menu button and then find the main library portion
> and enable library
> cleaning. This way when the "clean drive" light comes on, your library will
> pull a cleaning tape
> and insert it into the drive for cleaning at the next available interval.
> You also want to keep
> at least a couple tapes in your normal silo space for running a manual
> cleaning at times.
> Every once in a while you may get a tape that ends up being frozen and
> veritas decides to freeze
> it since it looks like a bad tape. Go ahead and manually clean the drive and
> reload the tape again
> with it unfrozen. In some cases, this is just a drive that is very close to
> needing a cleaning
> and has not tripped the clean drive light. Just a suggestion.
> 
> I can tell you that we are running with horizon load level 3.01.02 and
> 130.112E on our drives
> and its working like a champ. I would also recommend you consider upgrading
> to the 341_4A patch
> if you can, since it also has some corrections in it for releasing the
> drives properly. Just
> a suggestion. As always, check your fabric rev levels, tape drivers, drive
> firmware, library firmware,
> and switch rev levels into account before changing anything in your SAN.
> 
> Here is the readme on 4a.
> http://seer.support.veritas.com/docs/240940.htm
> 
> 
> Hope this helps you out.
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Paul Bleimeyer
> Research Computing Facility
> Mayo Foundation, Rochester MN
> 
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