Hardware Encryption problems

[rdphill]

Simpana 7.0 SP5 all updates running on Windows 2003 Standard SP2

Anyone had any experience with Commvault and hardware encryption at the physical tape drive level?

IBM TS3500 with 3592 tapes. Firmware is up to date.

When I enable Library Managed Encryption at the IBM Web Console and reset the library in Commvault as recommended by the IBM Gui, I begin receiving numerous, sporadic and no clear pattern errors of this type:

Failed to mount media with barcode [000441JA], side [A_2036], into drive [IBM 03592E05_4], in library [IBM 03584L22] on MediaAgent [cdnbwcv1]. SCSI Operation: Write OML. Reason: The request could not be performed because of an I/O device error. Advice: If this error is persistent, check if there are any visible hardware errors reported by the device or Operating System logs. Please contact your hardware vendor.

Jobs go to pending and will not continue regardless of which tape or drive I force it to use.

When I disabled it, things pick up and run just fine. It's very clear the encryption is causing the error.

IBM says, nothing to do on their side, it's either enabled or not. Commvault support says Commvault doesn't care what is happening at the physical tape level. Clearly, something with hardware encryption is interfering with Commvault's ability to mount and write to tapes....

Thanks for any advice,
Rick

 

[605]

As i don't have such device, I am just thinking ...

If you use the CV option of HW encryption, it might be that the software already expects such a tape. Consequently, if you have a tape which has been used already with no HW encryption (if it contains such label), it might be that CV will just reject it. The reason is that each backup SW will try to read an existing label first.

Please do the following:
- Enable HW encrption
- Use the TapeToolGUI utility and run a short write test
CAUTION: This will unconditionally overwrite any label !
- Then retry the operation

Please post the results.