MSL6060 - Checking if compression is on.

[Mark Bly]

We have a MSL6060 with 4 Ultrium 460 drives.

When I was looking at the Web interface I noticed that in the status screen the drives are showing as: Compression On? NO

I went to the setup screen and entered the drive configuration area.
Here there is a column for Data Compressing but when you change it to ON and click on Submit it does not seem to change the details in the status screen.

Are we running without hardware compression on or is the status screen reporting incorrectly?

Re-entering the Drive configuration screen shows the compression drop down list as OFF again.


Mark

[David Ruska]

My guess is that the status screen is incorrect. I'll investigate and let you know.

What version of library code do you have?

[Mark Bly]

Hi David,

Thanks for your reply.

The details are as follows:

Library
Firmware Revision: 4.14
Hardware Revision: 3
Boot Version: 3

Drives
Product ID: Ultrium 2-SCSI
Product Revision Level: F38W
Firmware Revision Level: 006.505

This is a new library which we are still performance testing. We did notice that the best throughput achieved so far was approx. 12Mb/S (which we consider to be very poor for Ultriums)
This performance could be due to the data that we are backing up.

I tried connecting to the Library using the serial cable supplied but could not get a telnet session to work (Also tried the MSLUtil.exe utility through the serial connection but it would not connect)

How can we guarentee that compression is on?


Mark

[David Ruska]

Mark,

Now would be a good time to update to 4.23 library firmware. The drive firmware is up to date.

You shouldn't need to use MSLUTIL. The diagnostic tool of choice is HP L&TT.

Regarding the compression status, we'll investigate this to see if the GUI is reporting it correctly.

In the mean time, you can view the support ticket (in L&TT0 for the drive to check The data compresson statistics. The one trick is you need to view them before the tape is unloaded (and they are cleared).

Regarding performance, there are device and system performance tests in L&TT that can help you figure out where the bottleneck is.

[Wojciech Kozikowski]

BTW, some days ago I saw F43W (006.942)
drive firmware version for LTO2 drives installed in MSL6060.

Regards,
Wojtek

[David Ruska]

Yeah, your right - we have updated LTO2 firmware out there as well (F43W for the MSL/ESL).

In LTT 'Get files from web' you can use the 'details' button to see the change list for both 4.23 and F43W.

[David Ruska]

Mark,

> When I was looking at the Web interface I noticed that in the status screen the drives are showing as: Compression On? NO

> I went to the setup screen and entered the drive configuration area.
Here there is a column for Data Compressing but when you change it to ON and click on Submit it does not seem to change the details in the status screen.

Are you viewing/changing this with a tape loaded or not? Some drives don't allow changing of compression (and don't report compression enabled) when no tape is loaded. I'm not sure if that's the case with LTO2.

[David Ruska]

I tried an MSL6000/LTO2 with 4.23 firmware. What I found is the status always says "Yes" for compression, with or without a tape. When I attempted to change it from the Setup page, I could change it to "No", but it would still say "Yes" when I went back to the main status page.

The results were the same with or without a tape loaded.

So, I seem to have different results than you have.

Are you on a windows/HP-UX/RH host? If so, can you install HP Library & Tape Tools? You can the use the support ticket to view the compression logs after a backup (but the tape must still be loaded).

[Mark Bly]

David,

I installed the L&TT software but it does not appear to work (Version 3.4)

After trying to scan for the devices the following message appears:
-----------------------------------------
There was a problem scanning this system that may or may not effect tool usage.
Press any key to continue.
-----------------------------------------

It then goes on with the following:
-----------------------------------------
Building Device Map
Checking for redundant devices.
Searching for drives of Library 'HP MSL6000 Series' at address '8.0.0[0-0/1...
-----------------------------------------

After failing to find the devices with the first two methods it finally finds 2 of the 4 drives by serial number. This is expected as this test machine is only plugged into one Brocade switch (same as drive 1 and 2 along with the Library controller)

When I hit any key to list the command options and then choose options from the menu, the following appears with no choices:
-----------------------------------------
Scan Details > Options >
List of all valid options (Scan):
Type the corresponding number to select or deselect each option
-----------------------------------------

What am I doing wrong?


Mark

[David Ruska]

>-----------------------------------------
>Scan Details > Options >
>List of all valid options (Scan):
>-----------------------------------------

>What am I doing wrong?

Nothing :-)

When there are errors during the scan, it puts you into the 'scan detail' submenu (so you can see what went wrong). Use "up" to get back to the main menu, and then you should have a selectable device list.

Type ? to see the commands available in each menu screen.

Out of curiosity, are you on HPUX, RedHat, or Netware?