SSO question

[day88]

Hi guys,

do you need to restart all SAN media servers if i power off and on the tape library?

I power off the librart and on it again but after that, Netbackup could not detect the drives anymore... but Windows OS can see it in the device manager...
any reason why this is so?

Thanks

 

[comtec17]

You should be able to just up the drives via the GUI or using the vmoprcmd.

It is always a good idea to bounce the services if the Master Server has been down or if you are unsure of any change you made.

 

[day88]

it not about up or down the drives...

After i poweroff and on the tape library, the drives and robot are not working anymore, i run the storage unit wizard but it could not detect anymore... only after rebooting, then it working... This happened twice, i thinking what the reason that cause this....

 

[comtec17]

Before you rebooted, did you try testing the connectivity to the robot and drives using the robtest utility?

 

[day88]

Eveything was working fine... until a tape was jammed in the library. so i have no choice but to power down the library and retrieved the tape but once i poweron but the library, Netbackup can't detect the drives anymore... This was the second time..

I came across a article in VERITAS support ID: 265943
Under the special issue. It stated clearly that server must be rebooted after poweroff/on the library but there cases for Windows 2000/2003 that the OS able to established the connection back. For my case, the OS plug and play able to detect the drive being removed during poweroff the library and able to DETECT the drives again after poweron. It just that NetBackup was unabled to see the drives...


sign... perhaps, i really need a reboot to establish the connection again.

Thanks comtec17

 

[GreyWanderer]

Windows does not like devices taken away while it is live. You did not mention if the drives were FC or SCSI. Our standard practice is that if the library (including FCR, tape drives and robots) are powered off for any reason. REBOOT all media servers that are attached to that SAN. Better safe than sorry, much rather devote 15 miniutes to reboot then get that call at 3AM that backups are failing.

 

[day88]

Thanks GreyWanderer i had rebooted all servers.
Anyway, it running FC.

 

[aramasw1]

In our case, running a mixed environ of HP-UX and Solaris, I just commands "ioscan -fC tape " and devfsadm on the respective platforms to re-read device config files and connectivity is established again. Then to be on the safer side, just restart NB daemons and everthing's back to normal.
No reboot is necessary, but I am not sure how it is on Windows. I am thinking there might be an option to re-read the device config again by going into Device Management GUI and get everything back (Being a little optimistic about Windows!!!)

 

[day88]

When i power off the library, the Windows plug and play will tell me that two drives being unplugged.

After i power on back the library, i went to the device manager, i can see two drives... it show that the OS detected the drives... but on NBU, i run the sotrage unit wizard... no drive was detected..until i rebooted all servers.

I asked my unix colleague, they told me on Sun they need not reboot the server, just run a ioscan will do.

In windows, you have to restart the servers to establish the "real" connection again..

i been trying to be very optimistic about Windows but time and time have proven me wrong!!!

 

[lenski]

I'm always turning the drives off on my Windows chums, they have never complained of not seeing the drives afterwards. There is a set squence turning our library off and back on, which if we get wrong an element ( like the lmu ) might be offline.

 

[johnny99]

I don't know if this is relevant in this case, but if I power off our STK L-series library and then power it on again I often get the problem that the library can't see the drives.
After I saw this the 3 time I talked to our STK guy and he told me that the problem was that the tapedrives we use need more time to power on the the library, so when the library is up-and-ready it checkked for tapedrives and saw nothing.
What I had to do was to use the reset buttom on the library.
And then everything works fine.

Drives are STK 9940B

/johnny

 

[day88]

Thanks Johnny I did tried to reset the library first but still the same. After reboot the servers, everything went fine.

day88

 

[1781]

Hey dAY88,


You might want to check your HBA settings. (Checkout technote 256261 and 251370 from Veritas website). Also if you power down the library the following must be powered down by sequence.
Library
SAN GATEWAY (BRIDGE)
Master

Powerup
Library
SAN GATEWAY (BRIDGE)
Master

 

[day88]

Hi 1781,

Thanks!!!! that's helpful

day88