Using Tape Drives 1

[Hick22]

I don't have a great deal of knowledge yet using Netbackup so was wondering if anyone could help me with the following...

We're running Netbackup V.5 MP2 with a Quantum M1500 Tape Library (with 2 SDLT Drives) and a FN Box attached. (Server is W2K SP3)

The problem is that when writing to tape only ONE tape drive is used at any one time. Now I'm unsure if this is a setting on either the Policy, Storage Device etc.

NB can communicate with both drives and they both seem to work fine but only ONE drive is ever used at any one time...

Any ideas appriciated.

Thanks

 

[lenski]

There is a setting for maximum concurrent drives if you right click on the storage unit. I am guessing that you are submitting two jobs which are not using multiplexing and so have more than one job requiring a tape drive.

 

[Hick22]

Thanks for the reply...

I've checked this and it's set to TWO. Also, maximum multiplexing per drive is set to 6 ?

Yes, that's right - We have few jobs that are being submitted that overlap one another, and rather than it pick up the next tape and use the secound drive, it waits till the current job is finished, then moves the next blank tape to the same drive !! It's a big pain aswell, slowing our backups right down...

We have had both drives looked at by Quantum engineers and even got them swapped out aswell to make sure !!

Any more ideas ?

Many Thanks

Paul

 

[lenski]

Try as a test running two jobs with no multiplexing. Multiplexing will look to use the minimum number of drives. If you think about it if you are writing to a drive and there is space on it then jobs will tend to write to that drive rather than start up on a new drive.

 

[Hick22]

Thanks, that's done the job !!

One more question... Do you know if it's possible to have 2 Duplications running at the same time on 2 Drives ?

Thanks for your help.

 

[lenski]

Err no sorry don't know.

 

[Hick22]

Ok mate thanks...

Last question hopefully...

Trying to find a log file or similiar regarding the activity of the Tape Drive ?

Thanks

 

[lenski]

bptm is the deamon in solaris which writes to the tape drive. Log should be /usr/openv/netbackup/logs/bptm/log.'date'. Other than that you might look in /var/adm/messages , although it's never made much sense to me.