Driver 9840 1

[joehill]

Hi,
I'm a little bit confused about what driver to use for 9840.
All servers is win2k3.
One media server is NB 5.0, the rest is 6.0MP3
I have 3 9840B with mixed version of driver loaded, they are 1.0.2.0,6.1.0.0,5.0.1.1 and 4.0.1381.1
I have 3 9840C all with version 6.1.0.0

What version should I use for 9840B?

/Joe

 

[Estoragetechie]

You need to be a little careful here. Whatever you do to get consistent behaviour stick to the same driver on all drives. Latest and greatest is usually best - but be aware of new features. SCSI reserve/release was the best gotcha in recent years.

I have used the 6.0.1 version successfully on 9840 A's and B's for ages. However the Veritas halfinch.sys drivers also work (if you intend using in NBU environment only).

STK Drivers:

http://www.storagetek.com/support/drivers.html

Veritas halfinch.sys:

http://seer.entsupport.symantec.com/docs/268380.htm

 

[Stumpr]

Estoragetechie,
Please elaborate on your statement, "SCSI reserve/release was the best gotcha in recent years"
Thanks

Bob Stump
Just because the VERITAS documentation states a certain thing does not make it a fact and that is truth.

 

[Estoragetechie]

NBU 3.4-4.5 upgrade introduced scsi reserve/release as a default. Unfortunately not all of the old 9840 device drivers were handling it and all of the drives started going down and backups failing.

Also seen the other way round where the new LTO tape drivers have been capable of multipathing support - unfortunateley NBU wasn't currently supporting this and this introduced loads of errors which were affecting performance and confusing users.

 

[Stumpr]

I had DLT7000 tape drives w/SSO at that time and I lost quite a bit of data :-(

Thanks for the reply.

Bob Stump
Just because the VERITAS documentation states a certain thing does not make it a fact and that is truth.

 

[Estoragetechie]

appreciate the stars - thanks Bob