A couple of things you could try...
 
1)  Disable any tape agents on all but one Windows media servers you
have out there monitoring the health of your tape drives (support has
told me some agents can cause temporary fabric disconnects that Windows
doesn't like).  
 
2) Make sure RSM is disabled.
 
3) Check out this tech note
http://seer.support.veritas.com/docs/270183.htm
<http://seer.support.veritas.com/docs/270183.htm>   
 
Hope some of that helps...
 
Cheers,
Jon
 

________________________________

From: veritas-bu-bounces at mailman.eng.auburn.edu
[mailto:veritas-bu-bounces at mailman.eng.auburn.edu] On Behalf Of Powers,
Mike
Sent: Tuesday, November 28, 2006 4:57 PM
To: veritas-bu at mailman.eng.auburn.edu
Subject: [Veritas-bu] Losing tape drives on Windows 2003 media servers


More recently I started losing tape drives from the OS at a alarming
rate. In the past it was one here, one there, but now I am losing a few
each week on each server. I am running out of options where to go next.
I also have other Windows servers configured the same way and they never
lose drives. The server that does not lose drives is using the same
driver and all servers are using persistent binding. I did notice one
difference in the HBA driver setting. The problem servers have
"TapeResetMask" disabled. But, I would not expect that to cause this
problem. The tapes drives always remain visible in HBA Anywhere, but do
not show up in device manager. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.
NB 5.1 MP4
9940B drives (Emulex 9802 HBA)
AIX Master
Windows 2003 server media server
 
Mike Powers
Storage Management
Fidelity Information Services
Office: 312-696-2903
Cell: 312-446-6250
 
     This message may contain privileged and/or confidential information.  If 
you have received this e-mail in error or are not the intended recipient, you 
may not use, copy, disseminate or distribute it; do not open any attachments, 
delete it immediately from your system and notify the sender promptly by e-mail 
that you have done so.  Thank you.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: 
http://mailman.eng.auburn.edu/pipermail/veritas-bu/attachments/20061129/b803d915/attachment.html