ARCserve v9 - Tape library fails to run jobs simultaneously

[chaucer]

We are using V9.01 with SP4 and the latest Device Patches (April 2004). Our Dell Poweredge 136t is on the certifed device list and the latest firmware as specified on CDL is installed for the SCSI card and the 136t. The 136t has three LTO drives in it and we run six backup jobs overnight.

Randomly around twice a week the first or second job starts and no other jobs run until the job has finished and then all jobs run using all available drives. We have tried swapping job start times but it doesn't make any difference. It is always the first or second job. Dell Gold support deny any problem with the hardware. CA support have no answers.

We are consifering a brand new installaton of release 11 on a different machine. Any comments?

 

[davidmichel]

Well it's either in the Job failing to pick the other jobs up out of the queue or the Tape Engine is reporting there are no available devices.

Next time it happens try running a Copy or Count job to see if they run. If they do then focus on the Tape Engine, and for that enable the tape log. Only thing is it will grow very large very fast with all your backing up, so you will have to delete it every night. The goal is the capture the problem with both engines in debug and then see what's happening.

 

[ChaucerGraham]

Thanks for your reply. I have seen in the activity log that the job starts so I would guess that the problems are not with the jobs themselves. I have ran Tape logs in diagnostics mode and that doesn't shed any light. The tape log consumes around 1.5GB per night so I can't leave it enabled.

 

[davidmichel]

so since these jobs start but just don't write data to tape until the 1st one finishes the tape device is available.

Because there is no error it will be tough to figure out what's going on in the tape log.

My best guess is a software conflict. Ck out my faq on Which Driver to use.