NO_HW on tape drives (hp-ux, ioscan -fnC tape) after firmware update.

[John R_3]

O wise ones,

We have an NSR E1200 with 2 ultrium2 drives.

I upgraded our NSR E1200 firmware up to 5.6.06 wich made the mapping dissapear. After restoring the maps I noticed that some hp-ux nodes have different opinions about the drives.

One node sees both ultrium2 drives, other nodes has one drive CLAIMED and the other one NO_HW (from ioscan -fnC tape).

The node with 2 visible drives has the same mapping as the ones that see only one.

Whats the secret?

Thanks in advance, John

[John R_3]

I forgot to mention that 'ioscan -fnC tape' lists a LOT of Ultrium 2-SCSI entries (over 30) with different H/W paths.

[Claudio Ruzza_1]

When doing maps for HP-UX servers make sure you put your AF entry (=the NSR itself) in the last position, with the highest FC LUN.
If the AF LUN is not in the last position, HP-UX sees (better, believe to see) a lot of drives. This is a known problem.

Make sure also you are not using different maps for your servers.

Good luck
Claudio

[John R_3]

Hello Claudio Ruzza, I tried it and still some nodes see different things. I even cleared the map and the entries still exist on one node.

However, with AF at the end I see now 3 drives instead of 2. It's not a real problem because I can tell them apart by looking at the serial numbers (in DataProtector).

I will I double check that the used drives in DP are the claimed ones I see with ioscan. To tripple check, I will do some read/write operations on each drive.

Another observation: on one of the nodes I see 3 drives in DP. With ioscan I see only 2. SAN stuff keep amazing me :)

Thanks for your response!

[Bob_Vance]

Claudio is right about the AF position in the map.

If you redid the mapping (so AF at end), then the devices would change and the "3rd" drive is probably left over from the previous config.

Do a
'rmsf -H hw-path-to-FC-tape'
then 'reboot'.
((Without 'reboot', you can try the 'rmsf ...' followed by ioscan', 'insf -e', then 'ioscan -fnCtape', but I've had mixed results with that.
))
That should clean up the extra 'ioscan' tape device. However, the actual device names will probably be different and that would seem to affect the Logical Devices in DP, so check that out.

One thing that puzzles me is why did the other system not see the many extra drives. Or did it also see extra devices?

tks
bv

[John R_3]

I remade the maps with Claudio's tip to move the FA to the end.

Two out of five nodes have the 30+ drives now. That might be the result of me fiddling around with the mapping. I now have 2 nodes with 30+ drives. The others have only 2. In DP 3 are listed (2 with the same serial numbers). The backups are currently running and all - real - drives are munching data.

Reboot is not an option at the moment but I will asap and try your non-reboot option.

The apparant random ghost tape units are strange indeed.

Cheers, John