Drive paths not stable
Hi all,
I'm having a problem after a tape drive was replaced, our drive paths are now not all being found by Netbackup and the ones it does find are not consistently the same. We have downed everything repeatedly, and rescanned but can only get about half the paths (the number varies). After the tape drive was replaced, Netbackup saw all the paths but marked some as down.
Netbackup is 7.1.0.3 and we have it clustered, with 6 drives and 12 paths to each drive. The drives themselves are in a Quantum Scalar i500 which does seem to be functioning correctly.
Immediately after one drive was replaced all the paths and drives were okay and being used but after a few minutes' drive 1 was shown as down by Netbackup, then came back up, then drive 4 went. Now all the drives are showing as up, but many of the paths are missing.
We think the next step is to reinstall the drivers on each of the boxes to restore the paths, but the concern is that we might then lose all the paths and not be able to complete any duplications to tape, which will mean our disks will run out of space.
Does anyone have any idea what might be causing the instability of the drive paths or how we can fix them?
Background info; while the paths are normally stable we have had to rescan when tape drives are replaced. The current configuration (prior to the drive being replaced) has worked for at least the last 7 months which is as far back as my involvement goes.
Thanks,
Katie
Comments 8 Comments • Jump to latest comment
Just for info the drive that was replaced was no 4, not one that was shown as down completely.
what is your Master server OS?
as your Drive paths are changing frequently, you need Persistance binding for the Drives in OS level.
talk to your System admin and Storage team to have the Presistance binding in place.
once you make the presisntant binding for the Drives in OS level Paths will not change..
The master is W2003 R2 EE on sp2. I'll check about the persistant bindings
Thanks
I agree with Persistent Binding.
Start by checking Make/model of your HBA.
Go to HBA vendor's web site and download their SAN management tool.
For QLogic, the tool is called SANsurfer.
For Emulex, the tool is called HBAnyware.
Supporting Storage Foundation and VCS on Unix and Windows as well as NetBackup on Unix and Windows
Handy NBU Links
Thank you both, I think you are right. I'll let you know as soon as we set this up and test
Katie
The other thing is that if you do have persistent bindings and change a drive then it may not been seen until you add its bindings
This should not really be the case with an i500 however as it should be presented with the same WWN / scsi enquiry string as the original as those libraires mask the drives to help prevent problems
However, if while it was being replaced the firmware changed, or any of the other drives also had their firmware upgraded while the drive was being replaced then their SCSI enquiry strings will have changed
It is always best, when possible to have robotics mapped as 0 and then drives follow on from that and if the drives are shared try and get the same ID for each drive on each server
As Marianne says the software should be available for all models and also something like elxcfg (or similar) for Emulex cards which is a really easy one to use
Authorised Symantec Consultant
Don't forget to give a "Thumbs Up" or mark as "Solution" if someones advice has helped you.
We tried turning on persistance on the master server and ended up with no drives!
All that persistent binding does is to bind current devices to current device names. It will not remove any devices.
Check Event Viewer System log for errors.
Confirm that up-to-date drivers and firmware is installed for HBA and tape drives.
Supporting Storage Foundation and VCS on Unix and Windows as well as NetBackup on Unix and Windows
Handy NBU Links
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