Error 90:6112 in Data Protector for Encryption

[mjrpiche]

Error while enabling Encryption on the drive, session will be aborted.

We have 2 LTO4 tape drives on the one windows 2003 server. The 2 drive are daisy chained. The firmware on both drives is at b56d(HP ultirm 1840 drives) installed with the latest drivers. The hardware encryption was turned on but it only works on the one drive. The other drive give the error mentioned above.

Any ideas why the encryption wont work on the one drive?

[thomasr]

I haven't tried to run encryption on daisy-chained SCSI drives, so I don't have any firm answers, but the steps I'd run to debug it would be:

- Run the currently-failing drive as the only one on the chain. Does it accept encryption then?
- Reverse the drives on the SCSI chain. Does the same drive or neither drive fail?

Are you using LTO-4 tapes (properly recognized and formatted) in each drive?

It might be that you need to have each drive on a separate controller.

[mjrpiche]

Well, after further investgation, the 2 drives are not daisy chain. One is plugged into a LSI SCSI adapter (which works) and the one not working is plugged into a smart array 6400 series controller. The controller does have the latest firmware and drivers. We ruled out cabling by doing a few tests. So we think now that we have a SCSI controller issue but what about it, we don't know.

[meloni]

LTO drives need a Standard SCSI HBA
The raid controller is not good for them

you should add a second HBA or better use another server, so you may have enough bandwidth to feed your two LTO4

[thomasr]

I've seen others say that encryption was problematic with SmartArray controllers. If the server and HBA has the bandwidth, you could daisy-chain the tape drives... else... add a second HBA (this is good if your server has the bandwidth, but your HBA is single-channel, for instance, without a fast enough bus)... or... use a second machine as a second backup server.

I'm assuming you've licensed encryption in Data Protector (I believe it's BB618AA).

MAKE SURE you read the 6.0 manual on how to create your first key, and the correct config file options for turning encryption on.

MAKE *REALLY* SURE that you back up Data Protector's key store through a process outside of your normal server backup -- i.e., 1) every time a new key is created, copy it to an encrypted file. 2) Copy that encrypted file to at least two targets: USB flash drive or archival-quality CD media. 3) Keep the password for the encryption keys well-documented and saved in a safe, secure place.