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LTO4 Cleaning Tape 1

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smicro

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Dec 26, 2002
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Veritas 6.5.3. We are having issues getting LTO4 Cleaning Tapes working. We keep receiving the message-no cleaning tape is defined in the device's robot or 0 cleanings remaining. we have LTO3 drives and the cleaning tapes for them our working fine. We inserted a new cleaning tape with label and confgirued the bar code rules for that label in Veritas but didn't see a cleaning tape for LTO4 setting. We used the setting HC_CLN but that hasn't work. Anyone know what barcode rule to use for LTO4 cleaning tapes? Thanks.
 
smicro,

Can you please confirm that the tapes are in the None volume pool? If they are assigned to another pool like Netbackup I don't believe they will be used as cleaning tapes.

Thanks,

John
 
Hi John,

Good point I checked and they are in the None volume pool but I did notice that the media type is HC3_CLN although its configured as HC_CLN in the bar code media rules. We tested one tape(fujifilm) cleaning cartridge for use with all utltrium 1,2,3, & 4 drives. The tape label we are using is CLN824 and on the end is a small L1. Could it be an issue with the bar code or cleaning tape type?
 
smicro,

I'm not sure if your master/media server(s) are Unix or Windows, but if they are unix, try running:

/usr/openv/volmgr/bin/vmquery -m <media_id>

It should report how many cleanings the tape has left. Also, what does "media type: " say? Based on your response it should say something about it being a cleaning tape.

If you are running Windows, you should be able to right click on the media ID and see or set how many cleanings are on the tape. I'm not sure what's recommended with regard to how many for LTO3/4, but I'd assume it would be pretty high.

Hope that helps!

John
 
Hi John,

This is a unix system. Below is the info on the vmquery -m. We have 8 LTO3 tapes in here and 2 LTO4 tapes in here. The LTO3 tapes are getting cleaned but getting error when attempting to clean LTO4(no resource). Thanks.

================================================================================
media ID: CLN824
media type: 1/2" cleaning tape 3 (25)
barcode: CLN824
media description: LTO3 Cleaning Tape
volume pool: None (0)
robot type: NONE - Not Robotic (0)
volume group: ---
vault name: ---
vault sent date: ---
vault return date: ---
vault slot: ---
vault session id: ---
vault container id: -
created: Thu Feb 26 11:59:25 EST 2009
assigned: ---
last mounted: ---
first mount: ---
expiration date: ---
cleanings left: 98
================================================================================
 
8 LTO3 tape drives and 2 LTO4 tape drives that is.
 
smicro,

Maybe NBU requires the same type of cleaning media as the drive, so perhaps you need to add 1 or 2 LTO4 cleaning tapes.

If no one offers any other suggestions, perhaps you can just open a ticket with Symantec.

Another suggestion to try is perhaps setting the media type of one of the LTO 3 cleaning tapes to (HC4_CLN?) to see if that has any effect.

Thanks,

John
 
Thanks John, the tapes themselves say cleaning tapes for LTO1,2,3,4 and for some reason I don't have a choice of HC4_CLN in bar code rules. Looks like I'm opening a ticket with Veritas. Thanks.
 
I just opened the library and manually inserted the cleaning tape into the drive and it worked so it seems something with barcode rules.
 
I had the same problem with cleaning tapes when LTO2 and LTO3 drives first came out. It ended up being a firmware patch from Sun for my robotic library, an SL8500. Until I was able to schedule an outage to patch up my robot firmware and drive firmware, I just manually mounted the tapes in the drives and removed them from the robot when I wasn't using them (as it prevented me from updating my inventory).
 
Why you dont leave it to Library, it'll do it by itself. I remember last time when I talked with STK guy, he said the best way: library will run the cleaning tape for itself
 
I have a library with 4 x AIT4 drives and 2 x AIT5 drives.

Although I use all AIT4 recording media (AIT5 reads and writes AIT4 media), the cleaning tapes are NOT compatible with one another. In other wirds, I cannot use an AIT4 cleaning tape in an AIT5 drive and vise versa.

All of the drives, media and cleaning tapes have the same 'type' designated so that I can use my AIT4 media in AIT5 drives.

To allow Netbackup to automatically clean the drives, I had to logically break my library into two partitions. One partition has the AIT4 cleaning tape, the other has the AIT5 cleaning tape.

Of course this means that I don't have all 6 of my tape drives in one partition....but it works for me.
 
Howdy,

The issue seems to be to make sure you define the media type correctly. In the case of LTO4, you should define the media type as HCART (I know, HCART4 would be more intuitive, but this is the way Symantec has designed it.) So the correct cleaning tape would be "1/2 cleaning tape" .

This PDF has some good information in it.

 
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