Hello Dennis
I think that there are three possible modes of operation:
1) Tape library does the cleaning
- usually in such cases, the secondary cleaning LED jumper on the back
of the tape drive is plugged into the library controller and it
handles it from there.
- this means that it's all transparent to Netbackup and hence the
tpclean reports
are meaningless.
2) Frequency based cleaning from Netbackup
- unfortunately this results in more cleaning than needed and doesn't
respond to unusual cleaning needs except manually.
3) Tape Alert
- either this is just a marketing term for 1) or it uses the SCSI
status bytes
to detect when the drive needs cleaning.
- it may be that this can also poll the robot which may know whether
the drives needs cleaning
based on the secondary LED jumpers.
Modes 1) and 2) seem to be exclusive of each other as are modes 1) and 3) but
modes 2) and 3) can both be in operation simultaneously though one would expect
mode 2) to preempt the need for mode 3) in most situations. It's likely that
3) isn't just marketing crap because of the suggestion that it can operate with
mode 2) simultaneously.
Ideally, one would want both 2) and 3) active or just 3) but there's no
indication as to when 3) is actually working other than turning 2) off and
waiting for a tape drive to get dirty. It would be nice to have some indicator
that Netbackup has polled the drive and that the drive/robot setup supports Tape
Alert.
I think the crux of the problem is that we don't know when 3) is working and the
documentation is not clear about the fact that Tape Alert requires no additional
configuration but will simply be supported if possible.
Note: One thing I liked about Netbackup was the fact that I have a set of
manuals for it. The fact that I find the manual deficient with regards to Tape
Alert is the exception rather than the rule. A vendor should never
underestimate the value of selling extra sets of manuals and media when needed
and at reasonable prices and even for older revisions, make your money off the
licenses, the documentation helps us use the licenses.
Regards,
John I Wang
Sr. Systems Engineer
Steverson Information Professionals
---
Enron Networks
Enron Building room 3427e
ph (713) 345-4888
cell (832) 493-1263
fax (713) 646-8462
pg pagejwang AT skytel DOT com or 1-877-390-4155
|--------+----------------------->
| | dfdwyer@tecoe|
| | nergy.com |
| | |
| | 09/07/01 |
| | 10:11 AM |
| | |
|--------+----------------------->
>---------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| |
| To: MarelP AT australia.stortek DOT com,
|
| veritas-bu AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu
|
| cc: (bcc: John Wang/Contractor/Enron Communications) |
| Subject: RE: [Veritas-bu] RE: Tape Alert - confusion? |
>---------------------------------------------------------------------------|
I'm running NBU 3.2GA and attempted to implement auto cleaning on an ATL7100 and
a Sun L11000. What I found was the robot will automatically mount a known
cleaning cartridge in the drive that requests cleaning. When a cleaning tape has
used up all its cleaning's it will be automatically ejected to the port. When
running in this mode, however, you lose the visibility of drive cleanings within
NetBackup. That is, if you execute the tpclean command it will not reset the
numbers for the drives whenever a cleaning occurs. Additionally, if your library
is in a remote location and that location is unmanned full-time, you may never
know when the cleaning cartridge gets ejected.
If I missed something when I implemented that would nullify all I have written,
someone please let me know. I would love for the iron brain to figure out when
it needs to clean the drives rather than set an arbitrary number.
Regards,
Dennis
Quote: "Time is not a test of the truth"
Translation: Just because you've always done it that way, doesn't make it right
Dennis F. Dwyer
Enterprise Storage Manager
Tampa Electric Company
(813) 225-5181 - Voice
(813) 275-3599 - FAX
Visit our corporate website at www.tecoenergy.com
>>> "Marelas, Peter" <MarelP AT australia.stortek DOT com> 09/07/01 10:35AM >>>
Im a little confused as to why the library needs to
support tapealert for the backup software to clean
drives.
>From what ive read of the tapealert hp standard, the
drive firmware will monitor the drive and populate the
tapealert scsi log page with information which is
retrieved from the host (backup software) by
interogating the drive which in turn decides how to
respond to the information.
The response may be mount CLN000 into drive 0.
I dont see what role the robot plays in this
exchange that is any different to serving a
media mount request.
Can someone clarify? The only thing I can think
of is Netbackup does not attempt tapealert in all cases
and may be dependant on the robot type the drives are
connected to as defined in netbackup configuration
(i.e. TLD, ACS, etc). If this is the case there should
be some logical explanation.
Regards
Peter Marelas
_______________________________________________
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_______________________________________________
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