P2000 is deleting my Snap Pools - Cannot perform data backup more than once

[Drumgod007]

All,

I have a P2000(FC) that has been up and running for about a year. I have HP LTO4 tape drives that i use to backup the data on my P2000. I use Windows 2003 NTBACKUP to perform the backup (VSS). This has all been working flawlessly up until now. I use the LTO tape to backup data on all 5 of my vDisks each week.

It seems that suddenly i cannot create a tape backup of 2 of my 5 vDisks volumes. I get errors in the Windows 2k3 server event log stating there is not enough free space on the specific vDisk volume to perform the backup (IE create a snapshot). The error is this:

Source CAPIVSSProvider - calculateReserveSize(): The vdisk dosent have sufficient spacec to create snap pool: array id=(Very long string of my vDisk array - too long to type out)

Observing the SMU utility i noticed that the snap pools for the 2 volumes that fail to backup have been deleted. I dont know how that happened and i need to know how to prevent that in the future.I am the only admin on this P2000 and have not deleted the snap pools manually.

I manually re-created the snap pools for the 2 volumes failing to backup and tested with NTBACKUP. The backup to tape was successfull. However, afer the NTBACKUP completed -  the snap pools were automatically deleted again. Retrying the NTBACKUP resulted in the same previous error above with not enough free space.

Another thing i noticed was the 2 volumes failing to backup are STANDARD volumes. I have 3 other volumes that work just fine and they are MASTER volumes(CLI - Show volumes). So i used the CLI and converted the 2 volumes failng to backup to MASTER volumes (convert std-to-master .....).

Converting them to master volumes allowed the NTBACKUP to succeed, however, after the backup completed the first time - the snap pools were again deleted, and i was no longer able to perform a NTBACKUP after that. Checking the CLI Show Volumes again showed the volumes i just convereted to MASTER have been converted back to STANDARD - automatically. 

So my big problem seems to be that my snap pools for 2 of my vDisks are being deleted automatically after NTBACKUP is run (3 vDisks are un-affected and the snap pools do not get deleted and NTBACKUP will continue to work). How can i prevent this P2000 from deleting my snap pools??????

Please advise.

TIA

Drumgod

[Johan Guldmyr]

Hi!

Hmm.. is there a limitation as to how many master vdisks you can have? Do you need a license for snapshots?

Does it say anything in the log about what it's doing? If you look in the store.log there might be something in there.

[Drumgod007]

I am able to make 64 snap shots with my current license.

Im not sure how many master volumes it can handle. I was hoping that some one else could help me out there.. Maybe 3 is a limitation of the sysetem???

This is the trace in the event logs (Information) when i create my snap shot manually - until it is automatically deleted. First event on top, last event on bottom:

Message:

1 Snapshot creation completed (I manually created the snap pool here)

2 a snapshot was created for a master volume but it has not been commited yet

3 Snapshots that were previously created are now commited and ready for use

4 a snapshot was committed for a master volume. The snapshot is now ready for use (This is where i can start my NTBACKUP)

5 A mapping or masking operation for a volume was performed (omitted disk/snapshot serial numbers)

6 A mapping or masking operation for a volume was performed (omitted disk/snapshot serial numbers)

7 A mapping or masking operation for a volume was performed (omitted disk/snapshot serial numbers)

8 A voulme was deleted (same disk/snapshot serial numbers that have been omitted) < --- This is the P2000 auto deleting.

There are no other warning/error/critical event log messages..

[Johan Guldmyr]

Maybe it's possible to discern more what's happening in the debug log? (found in the store.log)

[Drumgod007]

What is the proper way to access the debug log? Is there a CLI command or a page within the System Management Utility (SMU) ?

[Johan Guldmyr]

I don't know any other way than through the gather the log function (under tools menu) and then they are then inside the 'store.log'. There's quite a lot of them. If there is a CLI command it should be in the CLI reference guide..

[Drumgod007]

What program is used to opend the store.log file? It seems to have collected further debug info while it was generating the log. Id like to see what it contains, but cannot read it with notepad, wordpad, word, or excel.

[Johan Guldmyr]

You need to unpack it first.
There is also a tool on the documentation CD that you can use to make the xml output in the beginning of the file readable.

http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/SoftwareIndex.jsp?lang=en&cc=us&prodNameId=4118563&prodTypeId=12169&prodSeriesId=4118559&swLang=8&taskId=135&swEnvOID=1005#7813

[Drumgod007]

the output of the debug logs are uless to me unless i have a tool to dechiper what they mean. The MSA device descovery tool will only output the high level hardware specs of my server the p2000 is connected to.

I need a different answer that does not involve these log files. They are not helping.

Why would my snap pools be automatically deleted by the P2000 after they are used????????????????

Is it safe to delete the snapshots on each vDisk? Im thinking if i delete all other (18) snapshots this thing just might start working normally again - but i dont want to take the risk of corruping data on the vDisk volumes.

[JirkaV]

Hi,

I have a same problem with HP P2000 G3 SAS. I use Microsoft DPM 2010 with VSS hardware provider. Backup worked fine over 5 days. 3 days ago backup stop worked with same error. I try create new snap pool. and asign it to volume. Next backup job was ok, but it was deleted snap pool again.

Have you any answer please?

JV