Novell 5.1 and Arcserve 7

[cthreepo]

Please help.

Arcserve seems to be "crashing" my Novel (SP5) server and I do not know why.

This seems to only happen over the weekend i.e. when I come into work on the monday, the SYS vol has unmounted because "could not write to the FAT table".

If I take Arcserve off the server, the server does not "crash".

Any ideas?

Thanks

let's help one another, not hinder.

 

[TheLad]

Have you got ARCserve installed on SYS? Is SYS running out of diskspace?

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"It's true, its damn true!"
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[cthreepo]

Arcserve is installed on the SYS Vol. Is this ok?

There is 7GB free space.

Thanks

let's help one another, not hinder.

 

[TheLad]

I always recommend that if ARCserve is installed on SYS, you have to keep a close eye on the diskspace on SYS to make sure that ARCserve does not max it out.

Anyway, your error can be attributed to a couple of different problems. Firstly, you could switch off file compression to see whether that may be causing a problem. To do this, type SET ENABLE FILE COMPRESSION = OFF at the console. If the server still crashes, you could be looking at a hardware fault with your server.

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"It's true, its damn true!"
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[cthreepo]

OK thanks.

File Compression is already set to off so looks like I have a Hardware issue. Not too sure.....

Seems weird that arcserve is the program that manages to trigger it, so to speak.

If you think of anything else, please let me know.

Thanks

let's help one another, not hinder.

 

[BenjaminCNE]

seems to me that the problem would be most likely related to a faulty hard disk , or controller.

Ben

 

[JeffreyMarshall]

We run a combination network of Novell 5, win NT/2000. When we updated to Novell 5 from version 4.12 we were runing Arcsev version 6.?. After the update we had backup speed problems and upgraded to Version 7 of arcserv. First issue we had was related to the *.ham driver foe the backup device (dlt model unknown). Upgrading the backup device driver fixed the problem of speed and backup sometime unmounting a vol.

Since then we upgraded to version 7. after installing the 13 patches it worked ok, but other patches were add after that; this was be backup open files and get rid of error messages about open files, i.e. *.tmp, *.dat files.

Currently we have Novell 5 (and patches), win nt/2000 and moving to xp desktops from NT 4 sp6 and have Arcserve 9. (for remote win desktop agent).

I don't want to waste your time but each issue we had with arcserv required upgrading are hardware (tape backup drives and/or drivers), and software......

 

[cthreepo]

OK guys this may interest you.....

Having tried different things out over the past few days, one of the things I tried was to de-activate Arcserve 7 before I went home. When I came into work the next morning the server was fine i.e no problems at all.

On the basis of this, I believe the problem is to do with Arcserve.

At 11:43pm every night, the SYS Vol becomes unmounted due to an unkown reason. (File compression is set to OFF).
This is what I see:

http://www.theoldstationnewtonmore.com/MessagePopUp.jpg

Jeff: are you saying I need to patch Arcserve? If so, where can I find the patches? I have seen the patches on

http://www.cai.com

but there are so many I'don't know where to start.

Thanks people.

Jim


let's help one another, not hinder.

 

[TheLad]

All of the NetWare TIDs say "Try swapping Hard Drives, Controllers, Memory, or Cables. In this case it is usually a bad Hard Drive."

Good luck.........

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"It's true, its damn true!"
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[ITsmyfault]

First thing I'd check is the interrupts on the server. Make sure the nic's have low priority and any SCSI or FC cards have high priority IRQ's. Bad IRQ settings can definitely crash servers during backups (ask me how I know!) and too many folks who build servers don't bother to check them out.. our consultants sure didn't when they built our servers. I disabled the 2 comm ports on my servers to free up IRQ's 3 & 4 to give to my nics. Then I gave the FC controller IRQ 9 and the onboard SCSI got IRQ 11. Just remember that nics are slow and chatty and drives are fast and not so chatty. drives need priority so they don't get "interrupted" at bad times. Another thing that may help is that there is an upgraded Filesys.nlm which we needed post SP5 (NW 5.1) to run smoothly. Tech support would know better if you need that. Another thing to do - make sure you have your DIAG500 loaded, configured and running so when you abend, you will have the dump to send to Novell to positively ID what is going on. It may be Arcserve, it could be the result of an interaction of Arcserve with another process or ? There is a good TID on setting up DIAG500 to catch crash dumps.


FWIW - We had to get off of Arcserve after spending a lot of hours patching and tweaking and just never getting it to run smoothly. It would be fine one day, run incredibly slowly the next, not run at all the next.. and then be fine again. (we spent >$5,000 on consultants + my own time with tech support!) I asked CA to send someone out and demonstrate to us that it *could* work in our environment. They wouldn't do it! So I tossed them into the harbor; literally. We switched to Backup Exec for Netware 9 and use St. Bernard's Open File Mgr. We're now moving to Comvault Galaxy (but keeping St. Bernard). BUE works well - I can sleep at night now, and I have used it to restore our entire SAN (it works!) - but we now need something more powerful. Arcserve 7 for NW wss unstable for us and just did not work reliably. I know admins at large organizations who switched back to Arcserve 6 after rolling out 7. I'm only whining here bc Backups are *so* important, at least to us, that I have 0 tolerance for anything that does not work reliably. I was initially hesitant to toss it out, felt like it was my failure and we'd spent so much on it and all.. but the only thing that really matters is getting the job done. You don't ever want to be sitting there with no backup when you *really* need one. Don't be afraid to switch if it comes to that.
gd lk!!

 

[marvhuffaker]

EVERY time I have ever seen errors writing to the FAT, it's ALWAYS a hardware related problem. I can't think of an exception.

Since Arcserve is very processor intensive, and accesses the entire disk structure, it's very possible that just by running a full backup triggers the faulty hardware. Since your normal day to day operation doesn't use the SYS volume as much, it makes sense that nothing happens when Arcserve is not running.

Where is your SYS volume in relation to your other volumes? What is your drive setup and layout? My guess is that the host drive for the SYS volume needs to be checked and probably replaced.

What happens if you make a test directory on SYS and copy some files into it? Not just a couple, but give it a good workout. (Just don't fill up the volume). Can you duplicate the problem without arcserve? Try it from a workstation, but also use TOOLBOX.NLM to copy some files back and forth from the console itself.

Check the storage device in MONITOR that holds the SYS volume and see if there are any redirected blocks. If so, that also tells that a hardware failure is happening.

Marvin Huffaker MCNE, CNE
Marvin Huffaker Consulting

http://www.redjuju.com

 

[LawnBoy]

I have had the same experience with Arcserve 7 that ITsmyfault has. And eventually tossed it in the dumpster just like he did.

 

[cthreepo]

Well guys, thanks for all your help.

Having applied an Arcserve patch, all seems to be well but for how long is anyone's guess.

I have currently obtained two successful back-ups.

I will take on board the views expressed by people in this post and look at my options carefully.

Thanks again.

Jim

let's help one another, not hinder.