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Sequential mode in MSL6030 Tape Library

 
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Jaspal S Bansal
Occasional Advisor

Sequential mode in MSL6030 Tape Library

Hi,

We have just added a new LTO2 tape drive to our MSL6030 library. The library is connected to a ML370 server with 4gig of RAM and 6x300GB HDDs in duplex mode (2x300 RAID1 containing the OS and 4x300 RAID0 containing the backup data) via FC HBA. We use Veritas Backup Exec 10.1 with Library expansion option to backup about 20 servers to this server during the night and then backup everything on this server to MSL6030 in the morning.

To boost the backup performance we need to configure the tape library so that it uses both the tape drives at once thereby doubling the backup speed.

We looked at Library mode option in the Library Management Console and changed that to "Sequential Split" and changed sequential mode to "Autoloader".

All the tape media are in the first media tray.

My question is, is this the correct way of using both the tape drives Simultaneously or do you have to split the tape media equally on both trays?.
3 REPLIES 3
Steven Clementi
Honored Contributor
Solution

Re: Sequential mode in MSL6030 Tape Library

I almost positive that the media tray only serves the purpose of "holding" the media so the robotic controller and autoloader can scan, grab, remove, replace, etc a tape allowing less manual intevention between backup jobs.

I am not very familiar with the configuration options within the software.

I would think that if you configured 2 separate jobes, you could utilize one drive for job1 and drive 2 for job2. *The easy way to balance I guess, but it should work).

Steven
Steven Clementi
HP Master ASE, Storage, Servers, and Clustering
MCSE (NT 4.0, W2K, W2K3)
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NPP3 (Nutanix Platform Professional)
Jaspal S Bansal
Occasional Advisor

Re: Sequential mode in MSL6030 Tape Library

Thank you Steven

I never thought about that (two jobs on two drives), simple and effective!.

Everytime I change the library mode to anything other than "Random", both the drives go "offline" in Veritas BE. This is even if I reboot the server and reinstall the drivers etc.......

Sometimes the drives do come back online but then the job is queued forever.

The only way I have found to run a backup job is to use the "Random" mode. I am not sure if this is a problem with the Library or Veritas itself. Will keep investigating......

Meanwhile I'll go with running two jobs on these two drives seperately.

Jaspal S Bansal
Occasional Advisor

Re: Sequential mode in MSL6030 Tape Library

Discovered that the problem seems to be Veritas Backup Exec not being able to use the Sequential mode in MSL6030.

Will take this up with Veritas and meanwhile use two seperate jobs to target two drives in MSL6030