LTO - Drives Going Offline And Exhibiting Mount Errors On The Backup Application

Asset ID:	1-72-1536581.1
Update Date:	2017-09-26
Keywords:

Solution Type Problem Resolution Sure

Solution 1536581.1 : LTO - Drives Going Offline And Exhibiting Mount Errors On The Backup Application

Applies to:

Sun StorageTek SL8500 Modular Library System - Version Not Applicable to Not Applicable [Release N/A]
IBM LTO4 Tape Drive - Version Not Applicable to Not Applicable [Release N/A]
Information in this document applies to any platform.

Symptoms

A backup application may indicate that the drives go offline and have load problems.

Error samples from Commvault software:

Alert: Commvault tape drive alert
Type: Media Management - Device Status
           Detected Criteria: Drive went Offline
           Detected Time: Tue Mar 05 08:05:02 2013
           CommCell: <Removed for security reasons>
           User: Not Applicable

           Status: Drive Switched On/Off-line
           Library Name: TAPE-STK_ACSLS_1_SL8500_VW9
           Mount Path: Not Applicable
           Drivepool: Not Applicable
           Drive: IBM ULTRIUM-TD4_19
           Failure Reason: Not Applicable
           Condition Cleared: Yes

Alert: Commvault Tape Library Alert
Type: Media Management - Library Management
           Detected Criteria: Media Mount and Usage Errors
           Detected Time: Tue Mar 05 07:02:46 2013
           CommCell: <Removed for security reasons>
           User: Not Applicable

           Status: Unmount Error
           Library Name: STK ACSLS 1
           SparePool/Mount Path: Not Applicable
           Drivepool: <Removed for security reasons>
           Drive: IBM ULTRIUM-TD4_7
           MediaAgent Name: <Removed for security reasons>
           Media label: 010070
           Media/Space left: 0
           Failure Reason: Not Applicable
           Other library: Not Applicable
           Recall Reason: Not Applicable
           Recall Expiration Time: Not Applicable
           Recall Destination: Not Applicable
           Media List: Not Applicable
           Condition Cleared: No

Key considerations:

- Log snapshot did not show any drive communication issues nor load problems on days when Commvault was sending out these type of alerts.

- At times, there were some load errors of this type: "putComplete FAILED Drive Loaded, state = busyLoading". It was seen that the drives may have taken a little longer to thread the tape, though successfully completing the operation.

- In general, ACSLS and library logs don't show any significant errors that can explain this as a possible hardware issue.

Cause

Device aliases drop from active zonesets. Hosts that are zoned by a device alias cannot see storage.

This is an issue on the SAN switch.

Solution

Similar issues have been detected with different brands of SAN switches and the solution was to upgrade the firmware. Therefore, customers are advised to contact their SAN hardware provider when similar symptoms are encountered.

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