Media Server not recognizing Backup Tape Drives 1

[Sandridge]

We are using Netbackup 6.0 MP3 running HPUX 11.11 on our Master Server, and the Media Server giving us issues is running on Windows 2000. The media server suddenly stopped recognizing 2 of our 8 drives. We have restarted it a couple of times to see if that would resolve the issue, but it has not. We have tried scanning for the drives but Windows doesn't find them.
Does anyone have any ideas what could be wrong, and what we can do to fix it?
The drives are recognized by other media servers but not the one with the most to backup. It figures it would be that one!

 

[Stumpr]

Check to see if the windows server has any hidden devices that may be causing issues. Several events can occur that contribute to the addition of ghost devices in the Windows Device Manager. Some of these include adding or removing hardware, changes to tape drives or tape libraries, or failure to use persistent binding, static indexing, or hard AL_Pa's on storage area network (SAN) equipment which can allow changes to SCSI device path presentation of a device to the operating system. These ghost devices can retain Port, SCSI, Target, and logical unit number (LUN) information and conflict with the active devices being used by Windows. Under these circumstances, hardware instability can result as well as other undesirable device operations. Running the device discovery wizard, for example, may list 20 tape drives when only 10 tape drives physically exist. This information is being pulled from the operating system and can incorrectly associate tape device information with the VERITAS NetBackup (tm) hardware configuration.
You may also experience tape device drivers "disappear" or roll back to the previous drivers after a NetBackup tape device driver update. In this scenario, the drivers were actually applied to the ghost device and upon reboot, the active devices loaded the previous driver information.


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