HP StorageWorks 1/8 G2 1760 autoloader and ARCserve R12

[ankle]

I recently installed ARCserve r12 SP1 along with device support update 4. I have a new HP StorageWorks 1/8 G2 1760 autoloader with a SAS connection. I am using an HP SC44Ge HBA card. As far as I can tell all is on the certified list.

In the past I had to disable the Windows drivers before ARCserve would work correctly with my tape devices. With this device, I cannot get anywhere without having the Windows drivers enabled so I assume this version of ARCserve works with them.

I stage my backup files to another device and then they are supposed to migrate to the HP autoloader. When I first configured, some sessions did migrate to the autoloader. After my staging device filled up then a migration job was created and put on hold. That job once released also went to the autoloader. After that I could not get anymore sessions to go to the autoloader. The sessions would go to the staging device, but then they would never migrate to the autoloader and I could not manually copy the sessions to the autoloader. I cannot tell by the logs what caused this to happen. I have done staging and migration to another DAT drive without any problems.

So I tried disabling the windows drivers again, but again the tape engine stopped working properly. Then when I enabled again, I could see the tape device and the autoloader but they appeared as 2 separate devices. I could not get that straightened out until I updated the Windows drivers.

That being done, I am still having problems. I try to do an inventory and the the device appears to be "hung", etc. I have shutdown, etc, multiple times.

I like ARCserve, but every time I change devices or do a major upgrade, I have issues that take forever to resolve. I have support, but most of the time CA does not help. Any help would be appreciated.

 

[davidmichel]

With this device, I cannot get anywhere without having the Windows drivers enabled so I assume this version of ARCserve works with them."
this is because this controller is using a storport driver and Windows will disable SCSI Pass Through if the device is disabled. So as a result when using a storport controller driver the device must be enabled.

The Removable Storage Service must be disabled.

If this is a HP server ck for the HP Management Agents, if installed move SCSI Information to the right so it will not be collected.

12.0 Tape Engine has a lot of self healing code. As a result I've seen it to be much better at handling configuration changes.

One thing to try is deleting the contents of the TapeEngine registry key and then let it be rebuilt with the start of the Tape Engine.
HKEY_local_machine\software\ComputerAssociates\CA ARCServe Backup\base\Tape Engine\

 

[ankle]

OK, since first posted I have finally made progress with the autoloader device being recognized properly. After much reading, I discovered I just did not understand about disabling RSM which you discussed and also how the mailslot worked as it is different from my previous device. This is not an HP server.

However, migration nor tapecopy are still not working. I first make backups to my FSD device. All is well there. A migration job is created and logs state what is supposed to be copied and where it is to be copied, but no copy is made. No makeup job is created as the log says that the migration is successful.


I tried to manually copy using tapecopy which I have used successfully with another device, server, and 11.5 of ARCserve. The correct sessions are selected to copy from the database from the FSD and it sees that there is an available tape to use in the destination autoloader.

The problem is that using the tapecopy command, it cannot connect to the sessions on the FSD device and I assume that is probably why the sessions are not copied in the migration job. An example of error from tapecopy:

E9851 PVLTNF600 02/26/2009 02:14:30 PM Failed to goto session 316 on source tape, session skipped, rc[36]

There are no errors in the migration job other than nothing is copied.

Why can it go to the FSD ok in the initial backup, but cannot connect to it using tapecopy or migration? If no one has ideas, I guess I will have to log a support request to CA as I have wasted hours trying to figure this out.

THanks for responding.

 

[ankle]

Finally getting back to this one. Letting others know that just because a device worked with 11.5 it may not work with r12 without some updating. I had to update the OS on my staging device which is a Snap Server with Guardian OS. I also had to make some changes to the permissions on the share, but finally after much work and discussions with CA, I have it working. CA really did not help much, I just finally figured out what the errors really meant as they were not clear.

 

[sugherello]

Hi ankle,
just a question:

we are goingo to add a second library that uses SAS technology to our Arcserve server. Now we want to copy type data from the previous library (that uses SCSI technology) to the new one...is it possible? it is your scenario?

Thank you for your support.

 

[ankle]

What I did was I had a server with a SCSI connection to a DAT drive running 11.5 Arcserve. I bought a different server with a LTO SAS connection device running 12.0 Arcserve.

I have not moved the SCSI device to the new server at this time, so if I must retrieve old data, I have to use the older server and run 11.5 Arcserve.

My data is in two different formats at this time and I have not tried to convert yet. I have not tried copying data from the old device to the new.

I may try an experiment to see, but I don't know when I will have time. Perhaps someone else has done this and will respond. You may want to post a new question.

 

[davidmichel]

tapecopy.exe found in the ARCserve directory can be used to copy data from the old media to the new.