Problem with configuring tape library

Question

First up, the environment;

1. Backup server is on Solaris 9 with 3 HBAs.
2. One physical tape library and one virtual tape library (CDL) are connected to the backup server.
3. Each tape library has 20 LTO-II tape drives.
4. Zoning is fine and the HBA cards are working.

The problem is that inquire detects the robotic arm and 10 of the tape drives from the physical tape library but does not pick up the rest. What I found was that device files for all the tape drives are getting created on the OS. For some reason, inquire is not detecting them.

I can work around the tape drives not being detected by inquire and add them using jbedit, but the problem is that I am not able to configure the VTL as inquire is not detecting it's robotic.

Any suggestions?

Jiju1 · Answer

Does your problem is networker is not detecting the drive or the tapes not been loaded ?

Hari5 · Answer

Well ... I am not even getting to the tapes drives. The robotic for the library is not detected.

ble1 · Answer

Do you see it using OS tools?

Hari5 · Answer

Yes.

Jiju1 · Answer

DOes you find the drive once if you type inquire command .

Jiju1 · Answer

Check the fibre cable attached to that drive , if it works fine, Try to replace with the working drive to the old drive in the library . There might be a problem with the library or with the fibre cable .

Rajesh

Hari5 · Answer

Inquire picks up 10 of the physical drives but does not pick up any of the other drives.

Hari5 · Answer

Does not seem to be a problem with the fibre or the library as I am able to access the drives from the OS. Can read /write using tar commands.

Hari5 · Answer

I've already done that. It didn't work.

Jiju1 · Answer

This is the same problem i have faced for two times , one time we have changed the drive and checked , then the Networker detects the drive and for the another time , the networker doesn't detect the drive and we have uninstall and reinstall the networker , then it was working fine. As you said you can able to take a backup from OS, so there will not be a problem with the fibre . If the Networker is not in production , try to reinstall it . And kindly let me know .

Rajesh

ble1 · Answer

Since this is Solaris 9 then NW still uses lus. It is possible that you need to adjust lus.conf. Nevertheless, if your OS can see drives you should not worry and have no issues with configuration.

Hari5 · Answer

Thing is that it's lpfc drivers that is configured not lus drivers. In any case, if there was a problem with that, the OS would not see the drives, right?

ble1 · Answer

NW is using lus on Solaris 9 and prior.

IKP1 · Answer

Hi,Seen something similar to this before, have you tried using the long / complete listing version of the enquire command to probe all the addresses on the Fibre 'inquire -l'. Have found in the past that inquire normally checks sequentially from address 0 until it cannot find a 'next' address. However, if your addressing has breaks in the number sequences inquire will assume wrongly that there is nothing more to detect.Give the inquire -l (lowercase L) a run and let us know if your devices are found.HtHIKP

Hari5 · Answer

Does that mean that even if there are lpfc drivers in place, nw will still look for lus? That would mean that I need to configure on the OS using lus not lpfc, per force.

NetWorker

Problem with configuring tape library

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