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Tape Retensioning

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MHartsock

Technical User
Jul 17, 2001
11
US
Is anyone else experiencing "Media Positioning Errors" (Status Code 86)? I'm seeing that on tapes that have been retrieved from our off-site storage. Brand new tapes are not having this problem, but some tapes that get re-used are having a positioning problem... causing numerous backups to fail during the night.

Here's my environment: I'm using NetBackup Datacenter 4.5 on Windows 2000 SP2, I have a Master server and a Media server, a StorageTek L700 tape library with 5 IBM LTO Ultrium tape drives (2 LTO tape drives are directly attached to the Master server and 3 LTO tape drives are directly attached to the Media server). All 5 tape drives are SCSI attached (Adaptec 2944 SCSI cards). The robotic arm in the tape library is controlled by an ACSLS running on a Unix server (because the tape library is also utilized by another backup solution for the Unix servers).

My contact at StorageTek said the LTO tapes need to be retensioned. So I had my Unix guy run a Unix command to retension some tapes that were to be re-used and the problem went away! However, that's not the solution we're looking for... especially since neither Veritas nor StorageTek has heard of anyone else doing a manual retension on LTO tapes. Plus, the Unix backup solution does not have this "media positioning" problem and they're using the same style of LTO tapes in the same drive of LTO drives.

I ran a utility called MT against the tape drives and learned that "tape retensioning" and "immediate tape retensioning" are turned off. I think if I can get those turned on, then that will solve my tape retensioning problem. Now, it's a matter of changing those settings. StorageTek says it's controlled by the tape drive driver (which is a Veritas driver) and Veritas says it's controlled by the code on the tape drives. Neither side has a clue how to help me and both sides are pointing the finger at the other side.

Any advice would be appreciated!

Mike
 
what we do to avoid errors with tapes that come from an offsite storage is to put them on a table next to the robot for about 24 hours. This to let them get acclimatized again. It really helped to prevent 99% of media errors.
 
TELL ME MORE ABOUT THE PROBLEM I AM THE STORAGE ADMIN HERE. RUNING SAN AND 4.5 NETBACKUP RICARDO.LOPEZ@CSFBCONNECT.COM
 
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