Veritas-bu

[Veritas-bu] Drive Cleaning Frequency for SSO Drives

2007-03-16 03:26:16
Subject: [Veritas-bu] Drive Cleaning Frequency for SSO Drives
From: Anderson.Mccammont at morganstanley.com (McCammont, Anderson (IT))
Date: Fri, 16 Mar 2007 07:26:16 -0000
NBU will clean on two tapealerts - 20+21 CLEAN_NOW and CLEAN_PERIODIC.
Check your drive firmware release notes though to make sure there's no
tapealert issues in the rev you're running.  There was a fix in 5.1MP4
to handle edge conditions that meant tapealerts could go unactioned.  

If you have IBM 3584's you need 5.1MP6 (IIRC, maybe MP5) for NBU to play
nicely with library based cleaning (ie. graciously handle the situation
when NBU wants to put a tape in the drive and there's a cleaning cart in
there - prior releases could result in mount timeouts)

Frequency based cleaning on SSO is a pain - you need to determine how
much time was clocked on each media server in the SSO environment - NBU
doesn't do this for you (in 4.x and 5.x minimally), you need to script
it yourself if you cant use tapealert or library cleaning.

Regards

-----Original Message-----
From: veritas-bu-bounces at mailman.eng.auburn.edu
[mailto:veritas-bu-bounces at mailman.eng.auburn.edu] On Behalf Of David
Kerrivan
Sent: 16 March 2007 02:10
To: veritas-bu at mailman.eng.auburn.edu
Subject: Re: [Veritas-bu] Drive Cleaning Frequency for SSO Drives

NB will only clean when the TapeAlert flag CLEAN_NOW is passed - there's
a technote about TapeAlert on the Symantec site. You might have to dig
for it - look under DataCenter, not Enterprise.

You need the library Vendor to instruct you on how to change this at the
library, some like Quantum, let you do it yourself, others will come
out, and change the appropriate bit in a controller. Then you make sure
you have properly defined cleaning media with cleanings left in the
library, and set the frequency for cleaning to 0 hours (tpclean will
show you how) or do it via the GUI.

No one recommends a time based cleaning nowadays because the newer drive
technology is self cleaning, and the cleaning tapes are essentially
abrasive, and will result in more frequent drive replacements, not to
mention ultimately unreadable tape.


 
...............................................................
 
David Kerrivan  |  Senior Technical Support Specialist  
Kanatek Customer Support
Tel:  1.800.526.2823  |  Fax: 613.591.1488
Support: support at kanatek.com
KTI Kanatek Technologies Inc.  |  www.kanatek.com
535 Legget Drive, Suite 400, Kanata, Ontario, K2K 3B8 Canada
...............................................................


-----Original Message-----
From: Hindle, Greg [mailto:Greg.Hindle at constellation.com] 
Sent: Thursday, March 15, 2007 2:03 PM
To: David Kerrivan; veritas-bu at mailman.eng.auburn.edu
Subject: RE: [Veritas-bu] Drive Cleaning Frequency for SSO Drives

 
Good point, never thought that netbackup did not know when the drives
were being cleaned. This explains allot! I have Storagetek L700 robots
and use hardware based cleaning. How can I switch this to get netbackup
to clean the drives after xx hours of use? 


Greg

Greg 

-----Original Message-----
From: veritas-bu-bounces at mailman.eng.auburn.edu
[mailto:veritas-bu-bounces at mailman.eng.auburn.edu] On Behalf Of David
Kerrivan
Sent: Thursday, March 15, 2007 1:22 PM
To: veritas-bu at mailman.eng.auburn.edu
Subject: Re: [Veritas-bu] Drive Cleaning Frequency for SSO Drives

Actually, flip that around.
Library based cleaning can cause NB to down drives if it tries to mount
a tape in a drive being cleaned by the robot. The robot doesn't tell NB
that it's cleaning the drive, so NB thinks the resource is avail,
discovers it's not, and downs the drive.

If you have a "dirty" environment and enough drives do this, you could
be faced with your backups not succeeding in their window. 

Of course, with Tape Alert (supported by pretty much all vendors) you do
have to keep an eye on your cleaning tapes so that they don't run out
and that is a manual process. (job security :-) )

David Kerrivan

 

-----Original Message-----
From: Mike Kiles [mailto:mikekiles at yahoo.com]
Sent: Thursday, March 15, 2007 11:55 AM
To: Ellis, Jason; veritas-bu at mailman.eng.auburn.edu
Subject: Re: [Veritas-bu] Drive Cleaning Frequency for SSO Drives

Frequency based cleaning is not supported on SSO drives. Preferred
methods are in order of preference:

1. Library based cleaning
2. Tape Alert

Cheers

MK
--- "Ellis, Jason" <Jason.Ellis at indymacbank.com>
wrote:

> Is there a why to specify the cleaning frequency on SSO drives? The 
> cleaning frequency setting under Device Monitor, accessed by 
> right-clicking on the drive and selecting Drive Cleaning > Set 
> Cleaning Frequency, is grayed out on all our SSO drives.
> Additionally there does
> not seem to be a way to change the attributes of the tape drive to 
> specify a cleaning frequency from the Change Drive dialogue box for 
> our SSO drives.
> 
>  
> 
> What is the recommended procedure for setting drive cleaning frequency

> on SSO tape drives? Have the library perform this function? Or do we 
> need to remove and re-add all out tape drives to specify the cleaning 
> frequency when first added?
> 
>  
> 
> Jason Ellis
> Technical Consultant, Data Protection Team IndyMac Bank, La Mirada 
> Datacenter
> Phone: (714) 520-3414
> Mobile: (714) 889-8734
> 
>  
> 
> > _______________________________________________
> Veritas-bu maillist  -
> Veritas-bu at mailman.eng.auburn.edu
>
http://mailman.eng.auburn.edu/mailman/listinfo/veritas-bu
> 



 
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