TSM Drive status

[mankyjoe]

Hi,

Sorry if this has been covered before (I did search but only one thread came up as a result of my criteria and this particular thread didn't help

We have two TSM servers which deal with more than one drive.

They are both reporting a drive offline but i'm confused by the results given in a DSS command

Heres the outputs, does this mean the drives are offline or online?

Library Name Drive Name Device Type On-Line
------------ ------------ ----------- -------------------
PSALIB01 RMT1 LTO Yes
PSALIB01 RMT2 LTO Yes
PSALIB01 RMT3 LTO Yes
PSALIB01 RMT4 LTO Yes
PSALIB01 RMT5 LTO Yes


Source Name Source Type Destination Destination On-Line
Name Type
----------- ----------- ----------- ----------- -------
PSA00358 SERVER PSALIB01 LIBRARY Yes
PSA00358 SERVER RMT1 DRIVE No
PSA00358 SERVER RMT2 DRIVE Yes
PSA00358 SERVER RMT3 DRIVE Yes
PSA00358 SERVER RMT4 DRIVE Yes
PSA00358 SERVER RMT5 DRIVE Yes

Library Name Drive Name Device Type On-Line
------------ ------------ ----------- -------------------
QLIB RMT0 ECARTRIDGE Yes
QLIB RMT1 ECARTRIDGE Yes
QLIB RMT2 ECARTRIDGE Yes
QLIB RMT3 ECARTRIDGE Yes


Source Name Source Type Destination Destination On-Line
Name Type
----------- ----------- ----------- ----------- -------
PSA00054 SERVER QLIB LIBRARY Yes
PSA00054 SERVER RMT0 DRIVE No
PSA00054 SERVER RMT1 DRIVE Yes
PSA00054 SERVER RMT2 DRIVE Yes
PSA00054 SERVER RMT3 DRIVE Yes

Thanks for any help

Tony

 

[Yrrk]

The drives showing as offline (online = no) are not online according to TSM. TSM will not try to use those drives. As far as it's concerned they are unavailable.

How a drive gets into that state can vary. You can set it that way with an define/update drive command or TSM itself and automatically set it to that state if it senses drive read/write or communications problems.

It can be a bit missleading as it doesn't truly mean the drive is online, just whether TSM will try to use it or not. e.g. You'll notice if you power off a drive, TSM will still report it to be "online yes" - at least until you try to use it and it fails to communicate with it.

I have also seen improperly configured TSM servers where TSM reports it as online yes and yet when you try to run a command that will use the drive, it'll report insufficient mount points. You'll also see you have enough mount points configured. That can be pretty confusing . But thats not what you're describing and it sounds like your environment is already configured properly and running.

 

[mankyjoe]

Yrrk, Cheers.

Yes the enviroment is up and running.
Guess I'm going to have to have our hardware guys take another look

Thanks for the info!

Tony

 

[Yrrk]

good luck

If the drive is offline and thats not expected (you may think TSM took it offline automatically), you can query the TSM activity log for specific drive errors. Usually somewhere in there it'll show why TSM chose to take it offline. Searching for certain error codes or words like "scsi" or "offline" often is a good approach if you're not too familiar with TSM error codes.

I also find usually if TSM had a problem communicating with a drive or reading/writing to one, you'll find a corresponding error in the OS's error log. For AIX running "errpt" is a quick and dirty way to look for drive related problems that might've occured.

If all else fails you can try to recreate the scenario. Bring it back online (update drive command) and then try doing a DB backup to that drive (might have to take the other drives offline) and see if it behaves.

 

[mankyjoe]

Yrrk, do you know if theres anyway of using a particular drive without setting the others offline (knowing my luck they'll all remain offline when I try to update them again)

Many thanks

 

[lpblauen]

You should also run q path. Just q dr won't doit. q dr might show the drive on-line but the path can be off-line too. check both.

 

[Yrrk]

not from TSM no.. you could use an O/S tool like tar to read/write to the drive but that only tells you that it's functional from the OS level (still useful information). From TSM you'll have to take them offline and set the one you want to test online. The act of setting the others to offline shouldn't be a problem though. Again I believe TSM doesn't really set anything offline it just notes internally that it can't use those drives. They'll come back online without any issues.