DL380 w/Adaptec SCSI Card

[Sean Waite]

I had to replace my 1850 which was used as a backup server. That machine had the on-board SCSI attatched to tape drives and a Smart Array 221 card attatched to the hard drives. On the DL380 I attatched the drives to the internal SCSI RAID adapter. I know that the DL380 will not support both internal and external attatchments. So I added in an Adaptec SCSI (2940 UW) but Windows does not recognize the tape drives properly, so Arcserve can not be run. Since the primary role for this server is back ups I am kind of in a bind.

I have swapped out several Adaptec cards, none seem to work. I have the cards installed in the 33mhz PCI slot.

Any ideas on what I can do to get the tape drives back up? They are a Quantum DLT and a Sun DLT 35/70s.

Thanks

[Terry Hutchings]

Is this a DL380 G1?

If these are stand alone tape drives then they should work off the integrated array controller, since all DL380s (doesn't matter which generation) have dual port embedded SA controllers.

Are the Adaptec controllers being seen during post? If so, are the tape drives being seen hanging off the adapters during post? If so, is Windows (is it Windows?) seeing the scsi adapter? If so, is the driver for the scsi adapter installed?

[Sean Waite]

Yes, this is a DL380 G1. The card was seen fine by system at boot. The controllers BIOS identified the drives fine. Windows sees the card fine. The problem is only that Windows does not see the tape drives correctly, thus Arcserve does not either. If I attempt to install a driver to the Quantum and Sun using the Quantum driver, it goes ok. But, Arcserve does not recognize the media, and fails upon format.

The system event log was indicates an error with the Adaptec card. That is why I have swapped out 4 diffirent cards, all with the same result.

I tried to connect at first the tape drives to the external port to the Dl380, but I immediately got an error telling me I can not have both internal and external connections.

Can a smart array card like the 221 be used as a basic SCSI interface card? I never had a problem adding those in, but that was usually connecting to external storage drives only.

[Terry Hutchings]

Actually it's normal for you to get the error regarding the external and internal port both being used at the same time on a DL380 with the way this server is configured out of the box. By default the server ships with an internal cable connected to port one internally. Unless there is something connected to this (normally the drives are attached to port 2), then it should be safe to unplug the cable from port one internally.

A tape drive will not work when attached to a 221.

Have you tried moving the scsi adapter to a different slot?

[Sean Waite]

I see now that there is a cable connected to port 1, but that cable is not connected to any device. I have the system up now and am testing out a backup using the Quantum drive. Sadly the Sun drive is no where to be seen. As long as I have at least one working drive this will be fine until this weekend when I have more time to find a solution

Thank you for you help on this.

[Brian_Murdoch]

Sean,

Try the HP native tape driver kit.

This (might) recognise your tape drives OK and assume they are HP models (All DLT's are made by Quantum anyway - technology sold by DEC).

Go to the following web page and click the "Tape Storage" link to download the kit (HPTAPEDRVRS.EXE).

http://h18007.www1.hp.com/support/files/

Look at the tape drives in device manager and check that they have the HP driver loaded. Arcserve should be OK with this.

I will take it for granted that SCSI cables and more importantly SCSI ID and termination of the drives has been confirmed as good. If not, you will probably get lots of Event ID=9 and Event ID=11 entries in the system event log.

I hope this helps,

Brian

[Sean Waite]

After a reboot and removal of the drives in Device Manager, both tape drives are now seen properly. They are connected externally to port 1 (internal cable disconnected). So everything is as it should be.

I would have never thought to do this as a long time ago I had a similar situation where I wanted to connect some external device to a DL380 and everyone told me that the DL380 would not allow under any circumstance both internal and external SCSI connections. I had thought that to be odd with 2 SCSI channels, but who was I to argue, nice to know that in fact I can have both.

Thanks for you help on this everyone. It was quite stressfull going a few days without backups, especially since this DL380 was being put in to replace an already failed backup server.