Message Edited by YosemiteSam on 07-30-200711:52 AM

It's standard situation and it's not a issue/problem/bug.. when you perform scan (barcode and slot numbers are readed from tape library database) backup exec knows only barcode and slot number.. So you se "Unknown Media" in Media Tab.. If you use inventory option backup exec puts tape in tape drive and reads tape header.. if you have new tape - there is info "Blank Media" ..
Could you tell more about your policy configuration and backup exec media management configuration ???

YosemiteSam - Thanks, that does indeed sound like a similar problem.  I'll post any progress I make.

Marek -- So every time I add new media, I have to run a manual inventory?  The autochanger does an inventory itself automatically, so it knows the exact media type (I can confirm this through the autochanger GUI).  I assumed it would someone report that to the BE software.

But anyway, even after I run the manual inventory through BE, it still is failing jobs because no media is available.  More details:

I have a single policy that runs daily incrementals and weekly fulls.  Daily incrementals go into a pool called DailyIncremental, and Weekly Fulls go into a pool called WeeklyFull.  Both pools have a reasonable retention period, and are set to infinite appends. 

But when I try to test run either job, it fails saying no overwriteable media is available.  I have 8 scratch tapes available.  Shouldn't it auto label one of those into the appropriate pool?

Regarding the scratch pool another interesting thing is that under Job Monitor | System Summary it says there are 0 scratch, 0 recycleable, 0 imported, 0 allocated but the summary line says 8 overwriteable? 

On the Media tab, under Scratch Media, it shows my 8 tapes, with barcodes for their media labels, Blank Media for the description, and it says overwriteable.  But there is a yellow question mark next to each media label?  Not sure if that's normal. 

Thanks!

"So every time I add new media, I have to run a manual inventory?" - ABSOLUTELY NO !!
When you have tape library with barcode reader you have to perform SCAN after insert/move of tapes..
If you have yellow question mark - you should to go to Alerts Tab and click each alert with question... You have probably tapes previously used in different configuration, Backup Exec recognizes them and ask you for ovewriting... you can change this behaviour in Options / media management..
So.. try to start job.. click alert.. read allert message ang click YES or No..

"However, 11d will backup a job to a tape, but when I export that tape and import it again, that same tape will then be listed as Unknown Media and put in the Scratch media set."
If you have tapes without barcodes or tape library without barcode reader you have to perform inventory evety time when you insert/move your tapes..

Hi Marek,

Thanks for the reply.  This is a brand new system, brand new install, and brand new tapes.  So none of this media has been used before.  But regarding the yellow question marks, I looked in my Alerts tab, an no questions.  I reviewed all the alerts and the only items there were:

-Warnings/Information regarding LiveUpdate from earlier
-Errors when my jobs failed because no media was available.

I re-ran the job, and it again failed, but no questions in the Alert tab.  The failure is:

Online media check : Insufficient online or nearline media is available to start job.
Overwrite media check: There is no media online or nearline that can be overwritten or the job has been marked append/terminate.
Media check status : Failed

I am having a similar issue as YosemiteSam with re-imported tapes being marked "blank media" even though they've been written to already.   This was happening with v6135 and now with v7170.  What's even more upsetting, is that sometimes a tape becomes unrecognized even after it does import properly.  What I mean is, I insert a previously used tape into the Exabyte VXA2, import it in BE, it is recognized, but then when a job uses it, it suddenly gets marked blank again!

Backup Exec 11d as a whole has been VERY disappointing, and I'm quite sure I won't be recommending it to any of my peers.  How can I trust my data in a backup system that has trouble recognizing it's own tapes?!


I am also now having trouble with random jobs being missed with NO alerts raised or anything.  I can verify that the job is on the schedule and that the policy is set correctly, but when I check the next day, a job or two will be missed with no reason as to why, but others run fine!

I have deleted and readded the jobs, restarted the server, etc, and I still have missed jobs with no failure messages. 

Message Edited by Scott Straub on 07-30-200702:15 PM

Message Edited by Scott Straub on 07-30-200702:16 PM

YosemiteSam, you were right -- erasing the media solved my problem!  So when I insert new blank media I have to first scan it, then erase it -- THEN it will go into the scratch pool?

Is that the standard/correct procedure, or are we dealing with a bug here?

Thanks everyone

Scott.. I've seen the same issue (scheduled jobs missed without errors).. Did you install all hotfixes available for 7170 ??
Look at this: http://seer.entsupport.symantec.com/docs/289279.htm

"YosemiteSam, you were right -- erasing the media solved my problem!  So when I insert new blank media I have to first scan it, then erase it -- THEN it will go into the scratch pool?"

Erasing is only used when you want to "expire" media manually..

You should to perform inventory on only one slot - where you have your blank new tape..

It's very strange.. I've never seen this kind of issue.. hmm .. Did you change something in media management configuration ? hmm did you try to label media ?

Marek Kedzierski wrote:
Scott.. I've seen the same issue (scheduled jobs missed without errors).. Did you install all hotfixes available for 7170 ??
Look at this: http://seer.entsupport.symantec.com/docs/289279.htm

Marek,  yes I did, and in fact, I just reinstalled hotfix 8 manually last night and rebooted the server.  This morning I found that it only processed 2 of the 5 jobs sceduled.   @#)$*@$^%&*&!!!!

Try to delete all jobs, policies and recreate it from scratch.. I know it's strange but should work :)

Message Edited by Scott Straub on 07-31-200708:11 AM

Thomas,

My last post here I said that after unloading and reloading my autoloader, 6 out my 10 tapes were unrecognized.  Well I have since reran the inventory job and now they are showing up correct.  Yet I haven't changed any tapes!

This is not a solution either, just very inconsistent behavior.

It's probably obvious from my responses already, but I'm very concerned as well.  I used Backup Exec before when it was a Veritas brand (Version 8 maybe?) and I never had any issues with it.  If I can't trust my backup software to not write over data during it's protected period, then the software might as well go in the trash can.

Message Edited by YosemiteSam on 08-01-200706:28 AM

Sam,

What changes have you actually made?  Haven't you just "cleaned up" after BE mistakenly created an unknown tape?  You didn't actually change anything anywhere (options, etc), correct?

If your problem is the same as mine--as it seems to be--then deleting the unknown media won't stop it from creating more unknown media later.  As I said, I have been doing the delete unknown media dance for weeks now and it still creates more at least once a week.

Ok, I understand.  My problem is with a fresh install of BE 11d 7170 and the tapes were either written to by BE 11d 6135 or 7170.

Thomas,

Try running an Inventory on the slot with the "unknown" tape again (or twice if you haven't done it a first time).   If that works, you will still have to delete the mysterious "unknown" tape, but at least BE will recognize the tape correctly before it gets overwritten.

Obviously this isn't a great solution for long-term use.

Hey guys,

I've been doing some research on today and what I have found is that this is working by design. 

I'm currently seeing if there are any plans to get this changed or not, but I doubt I will have an anwer on this any time soon.  My suggestion to all of you having this issue is go to to http://enhancement.veritas.com and request that it be changed.  The more feedback we get from customers on this, the more likely it is for something to happen.


Regards,

Yes, I do have the first option selected, but even if I didn't, why is Backup Exec changing the Media Set anyway?

It did it again over the weekend, I am going to un-install Backup Exec 11, this is useless.

Message Edited by Jimmy_B on 08-19-200704:21 PM

Just thought I'd chime in on this one as well. I have

Exabyte VXA320 1Ux10 Autoloader
Adp39160 controller
BU Exec 11d

Everything has latest drivers, firmware, yadda yadda yadda.

I have all of the problems described in this thread (good to be me, huh?). I've tried

reinstalling application
reinstalling BE device drivers
replacing the cable
throttling the SCSI transfer rate on the controller down from 160 to 80
Recreating the policies and jobs
Re-labling tapes
Beating my head into a pulp against the wall

Nothing resolves the issues. Labeled and previously used tapes show as "unknown", or have the default naming convention applied to them (8mm000000#). Media is duplicated in the media sets, etc. etc. etc. Weekly jobs overwrite daily tapes, monthlys overwrite weeklys... all because the tapes are not correctly identified by BE.

I think that it's an insult to all of our collective inteligence that a Symantec employee got onto this thread and tried to convince us all that this is "by design". Pull-eeeease. Funny thing... NT backup does just fine with the tapes and the loader. The Exabyte utilities that are used to manage the loader and the drive therein work just ducky as well. It's only when I introduce BE that problems start.... and to try to tell me that the behavior is expected and normal is, safe to say, the last thing I'll ever want or need to know from Symantec tech support. If one of my Helpdesk techs ever tried to unload a pile like that onto one of our clients... he or she would be looking for another job. It's obviously a bug or series of bugs for which Symantec has no answer.... unless you consider, "it must be a hardware problem" to be an answer.

BE was great when Seagate first put it out. Veritas did ok with it, but Symantec has affectively killed it. If I (or any of you other guys) can't trust it to do ridiculously easy tasks like Inventory (??!!??), how can it be trusted to backup enterprise network servers? Simple answer... it cannot be trusted.

-M

Hi,

An update from me:

Re-install back to BE10 (new database, everything) - Same problem.

Then I found this thread here:

There seem to be a whole lot of generally related issues to do with media management and I am sure it all centres around the tapes Media ID.

Whenever we have a backup job overwrite the wrong tape, move tapes to a different media set, verify the wrong tape after doing a backup or do something whacky, the Media ID seems lost somewhow (00000000-FFFF-0000-0000-000000000000).

Like I said before, I know my issues aren't quite on topic with the original "Unknown Media" but there are some themes here in common.

Even IF the tapes/drive are contributing to this issue, it still does NOT explain why Backup Exec is handling the errors in this way.

I would by FAR prefer that if a tape cannot be IDd properly that Backup Exec just not use it and notify me. Instead, if BE can't find the expected Media ID, it just seems to grab whatever other tape it can get it's hands on, changes it to the media set it needs to complete the backup and proceeds.

Makes it a nightmare to keep track of what backup is where. In fact, if we didn't have a Barcode scanner, I wonder how the hell we'd have ANY chance of tracking down what happened to what tape.

Message Edited by Jimmy_B on 09-02-2007 11:28 PM

Message Edited by Jimmy_B on 09-02-2007 11:30 PM

Guess what folks?  This problem has existed through a major version change (from 10d to 11d) and was recognized back in 2006!

I don't know what to say.  I guess Symantec doesn't have the ability to solve this problem.

I've started to look at Microsoft DPM 2007, although I'm leery that it's too close to a dreaded MS version 1 product and will not be very good at backing up non-Microsoft technologies to be worthwhile at this time.  Any other vendors I should consider while I figure out how to obtain a refund on this software? 

We have had the problem with duplication of tape barcodes by BE every since we migrated from BE 9.1 to 12 (via v11 of course).

Not really been too much of a problem except this morning, when I ran a permanent archive. Loaded and existing permanent archive tape with appendable spaces.  Ran the archive.

I now have a duplicate tape entry for the permanent archive tape, and I don't know if its corrupted the existing archive or not.

Not happy :-(

Oh, and I had cleaned the tape drive before inserting the tape into the library.