LTO4 Error code 6 blinking

Question

I have a problem to get an Dell LTO4 internal streamer working. First of all  I received a total of 6 SAS cards from Dell before I could attach to LTO4 unit to a SAS card that could recognize the streamer. I don't know if this last card is the right one. In the current set-up the Dell 6 Gbps SAS Controller  is built into an Dell T620 as the dedicated controller for the LTO4 unit. The tape unit is added and installed to an SBS 2011 virtual machine running under Vmware ESXi 5.1. In the SBS 2011 server the hardware is recognized and installed as a IBM tape unit. So far so good, but when i put a tape into the unit after about 5 minutes the LTO is blinking error 6 with an exclamation sign. Does anyone know what is cause of this problem? Could it be the controller of is the Virtual environment not supported? Kind Regards, Allert Lageweg

DELL-Sam L · Answer

Hello Allert Lageweg,

First thing is that an error code 6 means that either the drive or media is having an issue. First thing that I would do is to update the firmware on the tape drive to ensure that you are not getting an inaccurate error code. Once the firmware is up to date then I would try again to install the drivers for the tape drive and make sure that it is using manufacture drivers and not MS drivers as they can cause you to get error messages that will make it seem like there are communication errors.

Now officially tape drives are not supported in ESX or ESXi. Now you can get it to work & will run backups. Here is a couple of links that gives VMWare support for tape devices. http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=2007904

Please let us know if you have any other questions.

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