New to Netbackup - Tape device error

[ronkr]

I have a lot of Backup Exec experience but new to NetBackup. We are running 5.0 mp2. The person that set it up is gone and no one has touched it for a couple months.
I have a tape library w / 2 drives and one drive was not available. I rebooted master server (win2k) and library. Then no backup devices were showing up in Netbackup. I reran the device wizard and set them up. Now my backups go active and stay active with no tape drive activity.

Thanks.

 

[lenski]

Well rule one for anybody who has been around NB for a while is never use the wizard. You have to take care when rebooting, the library should be up so the master can see the drives.

If it was me I would delete all the drives and storage units and start again. Take a note of all the settings first.

 

[Spaced0ut]

Test out robot configuration using robtest, to check that you can communicate with the tape library and tape drives

 

[GreyWanderer]

I agree w/ the prior statement regarding the wizards, they are getting better though.

Make sure you can 'see' the medium changer and the tape devices at the OS level from Windows Device Manager.

In NBU, make sure you have assigned the drives to the robot, for some reason the wizard always makes devices standalone. The wizard recycles the services for you post completion.

Check drive status from NBU GUI, they need to be "UP" and have the correct Robot Control, i.e. TLD,ACS, etc.

Did you go to DEVICES in your NBU gui and see the Pending Request frame?

 

[ronkr]

I had restarted everything on the 11th. I made sure while the server was posting up that the changer and both tape drives were seen by the server. I have checked windows device manager and all 3 devices are working according to it. In the NBU, when I set it up through the wizard, it did put the drive as standalone and I moved them to the robot. My jobs are going to the Pending Request frame also. The 2 Drives frame above the Pending Request shows a ready status of 'No'. I thought I saw 'No' in there until a job was actually running. I have the correct Robot Control as DLT2 throughout all the settings.

I also ran robtest per SpacedOut and I did 'inquiry' and it returned what the robot is. I then ran 'test_ready' and it returned that the unit is off-line.

To add drives without the wizard, I can just blow all the devices away and add them through the individual robot and drive frames?

Thanks.

 

[ronkr]

I have also noticed, in the system event viewer, I am getting 'DCOM got error, the service cannot be started........attempting to start ntmsSvc with argument
-service in order to run the server.

 

[GreyWanderer]

From what you've described your drives are not "UP" to NBU.

Is the "NetBackup Device Manager Service" running?

From the Activity Monitor screen, select drives, the status should reflect the robot type...TLD in your case I believe.

See if you can "reset" or "up" the drive from this screen via right-clicking the drive. If you get a vmd error and your NBU Device Manager service IS running, you still have config problems. How are the drives attached to your system, fiber, SCSI, direct? What is the ouput of vmdareq and vmglob?

 

[YouEnjoyMyself]

what is the media type that you are using (ex. HCART1, HCART2, HACART3...) The drive should be set to the media type of which you use.

 

[ronkr]

I have a solution to my tape drive problems. I talked with support after exercising all of your suggestions and I thank you for them. My library has 2 drives. When I was submitting jobs they were initially going drive 1 and just sitting there. When running the robtest utility, if I was sending commands to drive 1, they were actually being sent to drive 2. Drive 1 wouldn't respond to either of the drive definitions I had in NetB. We deleting all hardware again, and defined the tape drive as #3, (this was actually my drive 1)and it would accept commands. I defined the 2nd drive as drive 4. I then had control of both drives through robtest. I then deleted both of them and redefined them back to drive 1 and 2 and I seem to be fine.
Thanks to all for your help.