Device names

Good News

so ; the issue for the Device names is now over ?

and the functional problem ? i mean : are you able to lablel tapes ? .....

regards

Shareef

Hi again,

Nice to hear that your problems seems to go away.

A little strange though that the DELL jukebox devices doesn't get persistant names in your config.

I would check DELL support or even Overland (or what manufacturer DELL OEM your case)

What I would check is wheter these targets provide NetWorker with a serial number.

Run a INQUIRE at a prompt. You should get a serialnumber for each target.

From what I understand, NetWorker tracks drives based on the serial. If you power-off a drive and

need to adopt the to the change. (If Windows shift your drives from \\.\Tape1 --> \\.\Tape0 for example)

If you get a serial number, a reconfigure in NetWorker would correct the setup automagically.

So that you know what you might be facing down the road.

A guess, could it be the case that your old DELL was connected Point-to-Point and now you have

loop connection. I'm not familiar w. your HW.

Anyway, good to hear that things seems to work as desired.

regards

Håkan

Hakan,

Attached is a screenshot of the "inquire" command run on the NetWorker server.  The Dell Autoloader is at SCSI address 6.1.1 and it does return a S/N as you can see.  As far as reconfiguring in NetWorker I have done that at least 10 times and every time I get the same result.  What I don't understand is this replacement autoloader is configured/connected exactly the same way as the old one.  All I did when I replaced the defective autoloader was pull the power cord, network cable and SAS cable.  I then put the new autoloader in and reconnected everything.  As far as things working as desired, they are working but I still want to know why the new autoloader isn't using the persistent naming protocol like the last autoloader was.  Weird.

Shareef,

I guess the issue is over since the EMC tech that helped me closed the case.  I would like to know exactly why it isn't working now but was working before I replaced the autoloader, but apparently the people at EMC didn't feel it was necessary to figure it out.  She just stated that everything looks fine and it should be working properly.

Yes, I am able to label tapes, that was a simple fix.

Thanks for all your help.

Hmm..

A bit strange. Havn't been working that much with SAS attach. One theory. When the persistant name is created, it is derived from

the portname/wwn/wwpn/SN info somehow. In your case you attach another HW (different SN atleast) on the same port. Could it be that windows

keep a entry for the tape object(removed). Containing port/SN/persistant name, and when you switch drive you get a collision in the REGISTRY, forcing the drive to use non-persistant binding.

Can you find the "removed" targets if you "set show devices not present" before starting the devicemgr in windows.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/269155

• Type set devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices=1
• Type start DEVMGMT.MSC (or just DEVMGMT.MSC)
• Click on the View menu, and then click Show Hidden Devices

• One way of testing would be to change the SCSI target, but it doesn't seem to be propriate to fiddle with your working setup....

  We actually have a similar issue on HP-UX, where the OS try to "save" us from misconfigured SAN changes.

  (we need to accnowledge the change in the OS before the tapedrive is awailable. (using VTL))

  best regards

  Håkan

Hi Jason,

I'm curious what is the vendor of your drives in the Dell jukebox?  There might be a conflict with the MS's driver on the OS.

melm

There 2 things:

- what drivers do you use (and what is the HW manufactor of drives)

- what patch level do you use

With MS, you can have persistant names like .\\Tape34567890 but then there is patch on top of that which enables persistant names to be masked again by using traditional names.  Not sure if IBM did that so far (in case you use IBM drivers).  I might have skiped where it is mentioned, but did you reboot the box since?

That is why I'm asking Jason what manufactor of LTO4 drives are in the old and new Dell jukeboxes.  If it is IBM drives in the new jukebox but non-IBM drives in the old one and he doesn't have IBM driver for MS 2003 installed, that will explain why the system was able to use persistent names but not after he switched to the new jukebox.  He has been wondering why?  And I'm trying to help.

Hi Melm.  You might have misunderstood me.  My reply was to thread and not what you have said.  Not sure what view of forum you have, but I have flat one.  Meaning that in longer threads I read all posts and then I just press reply to last one in row which happened to be yours.  So, nothing against your post, but I assume depending on thread view you may get easily different ideas.

I have to agree with Melm's theory.   Since persistenet naming registry entries are based on the driver, then it would be logical to assume that then new library is using a different set of drivers. 

We deal with this issue all of the time, since our backup servers are still running W2k3.  I don't know if Win2k8 changes this. 

In our experience, persistent names are of the \\.\Tape481101 variety, and non persistent names are of the \\.\Tape0 variety.   

David Browning wrote: In our experience, persistent names are of the \\.\Tape481101 variety, and non persistent names are of the \\.\Tape0 variety.

Small clarification to what I said earlier (to add to the persisten name mess):

KB873337 - Persistent Binding fix (produces long tape names as an offset is  applied)

KB933682 - fix for offset produced by article 873337

So, with KB873337+KB933682 you use persistent binding to devices, but you still use legacy names for tape drives.  Several years ago when this was a hot topic there was a bit of confusion about how this works as second fix was introduced silently by MS (at that time) and initially NW did not support or handle well names introduces by KB873337 alone.

Yep. In fact, IBM driver on Windows for persistent naming has totally different registry entry than the MS driver. If there is a need, I'll post the registry entry for IBM driver.