Any Jukebox operation is terribly slow

Hi Johan!

To be clear, this was working well before, then it started giving you problems.  This tells me one thing: SOMETHING changed in the environment.

Now before you say nothing changed, consider this: if everything was working well and the response was good, why would there suddenly be an issue if there were no changes?

Questions:

Is the jukebox connected by SCSI or by SAN (hba)?

Were there ANY OS updates performed on the host?

Were there any firmware updates performed anywhere in the environment?

Did you perform an update to the NetWorker server components?

Is there physical damage to the cabeling that connects the server to the jukebox?  This can cause issues with traffic flow and is more likely with SAN cabling.

Answer these for me and I will be able to help focus your efforts in resolving this issue.

Mark

Hi Mark,

- The Jukebox HP MSL4048 is connected with 2 SCSI controllers to the Legato server HP DL380 - G4 running Legato V 7.4.4 in Win2003.

- Now and then Microsoft Security updates are done (1 a month)

- No firmware updates were done

- I did not upgrade yet to V 7.6.2 because of this problem (my other Legato environment is full in V 7.6.2 without any problem)

- I don't see any harm to the cabling

- I have removed all the disks (in RAID) from the server and moved them in the same order to an identical HP DL380 - G4. And the problems stays the same.

- There is no SAN involved in the Legato server - Jukebox configuration

Best regards,

Johan

Let me explain what I am thinking here.

When I encounter a slow library, the first question I have is not related to the software, or the operating system, but the connection(s).

I pull the hardware spces for the server and the SCSI or HBA card(s).  I check the speed of the cards and the speed of the bus the cards are in.

Lets take a server that has 4 PCI slots in it.  There is one 33MHz bus with two pci slots and one 66MHz bus with two pci slots.

And then there is the card.  Lets say it is a newer card, so it is rated as 33 / 66 MHz speed capable.

If you take both cards and you place them in the slots on the 33MHz bus, you will get half of the performance that you will if you place these same cards in the 66MHz bus slots.

I would start there.  And the trace back to a point when the library was working well.  Try to figure out what changes took place on the environment that may have impacted the performance of the library.

Also, one other note: remeber that if you change the parellisim of the library within NetWorker, you can have a negative impact on the performance of the library.

Finally, if the library has a bridge in it, this can impact drive speed, so that needs to be taken into consideration as well.

I hope this helps some!

Mark

Please clarify for me - has this issue just started, or has it been going for a while - say since you installed the library?

Hi,

It has been a long time since I used msl libraries, but there used to be a tool from HP called something like storageworks library and tape tool. Check out the support pages at HP and run the diagnostics if you can find it. That should reveal if there are issues with the library itself.

Rickard

Hi,

- The problem started 2 weeks ago.

- The only changes the last month, was the installation of  4 KBs (security patches of Micosoft):

          - KB2559049

          - KB2570222
          - KB2567680

          - KB2566454

- i don't find errors in the log of the Jukebox, of the OS and of Legato.

- What worries me the most is the fact the Jukebox still works in a way (labelling is slow, reset is slow ,writing is slow,...) it is all very slow. The backup time for each group doubled.

- There is no bridge. The Jukebox is directly connected to the server with a SCSI controller for each drive.

Did you reboot the machine since this started?  Do you also get slower response when using directly SJI commands?