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Ultrium 215e and WinNT Error ID 11

 
Ali Martin
New Member

Ultrium 215e and WinNT Error ID 11

OK, bear with me here!

I am experiencing random WinNT Event ID 11's when verifying the overnight backup. Sometimes it's good, sometimes it's bad. I have two Win NT4 domains, both of which are experiencing the same problem with different frequency.

Due to a recent server upgrades all the servers are Viglen XX210 with Intel SBT2 motherboards. These boards have an on-board Adaptec AIC-7899 Ultra160 PCI SCSI controller; these are presented to the rear of the chassis where the HP Ultrium 215e is connected.

There are two Win NT4 domains and there is one Ultrium device per domain. An enterprise solution using Backup Exec 8.6 means that about 60GB of data over 11 servers is backed up onto 1 device, and 20GB over 4 servers to the other. Incidently, the 60GB model is more prone to failure.

The backup will fail on the 60GB backup about once a week. Event ID 11 is written twice to the WinNT logs:

ADPU160M.SYS - "Driver detected a controller error on \Device\ScsiPort1."

HPLTO.SYS - "Driver detected a controller error on \Device\Tape0."

I've always perceived Event ID 11 to be a hardware issue.

My guess is that, since the 60GB backup is working harder, there is some sort of tape operation (a rewind?) that ties up the Ultrium for a significant amount of time, causing the Adaptec driver to timeout, causing Backup Exec to fail. Do you reckon this is correct?!

How do I fix this?! Would a separate PCI SCSI controller (ie. rather than an on-board one) be a viable solution? Would locating the backup device on a Win2000 server (ie. different drivers, etc) do it?

Using the latest Adaptec drivers, WinNT 4.0 SP6a (plus hot-fixes, etc). Ultrium 215e is running firmware N16D/OEM9. I have also changed the Adaptec Sync Transfer Rate down from 160MB/s to 40MB/s with some noticeable improvement.

Thanks!
14 REPLIES 14
BR642007
Respected Contributor

Re: Ultrium 215e and WinNT Error ID 11

Ali,

Are the Ultrium drives the only devices on the SCSI bus or do they have to share it with other devices (like harddisks).
It should be on it??s own SCSI channel, if you have the possibility to try this: please do so.

Marco.
Ali Martin
New Member

Re: Ultrium 215e and WinNT Error ID 11

Hi Marco

Thanks for the reply.

There are no other devices on the SCSI chain.

FYI, there is an internal 1m SCSI cable that connects the on-board SCSI to the external presentation on the rear of the chassis. The Ultrium is then connected using the supplied HP cable. An engineer has reviewed this setup and can see no issue with cable length or termination.

Ali
andrew marcelin
New Member

Re: Ultrium 215e and WinNT Error ID 11

are you using the native backup from NT4 as this is not supported.....this will only supply a data steream at 3mb/s and the ultrium need at least 7mb/s....
Please try downloading a trial version of an ISV backup software and see if the system events dissapear....
Also make sure that your onboard is not sharing an irq with any other unlike device like a nic card.....i am talking about hardware irq sharing and not software as in the O/S.
andy
Knowledge is power
Ali Martin
New Member

Re: Ultrium 215e and WinNT Error ID 11

Thanks for the reply Andy!

To clarify:

- No, I am not using the native NT4 backup software. I am using Backup Exec v8.6.

- There are no visible IRQ / resource conflicts on the server (admittedly I hadn't thought of looking at that).

Ali
CA1127876
Occasional Advisor

Re: Ultrium 215e and WinNT Error ID 11

Hi,

I'm afraid I don't have an answer for you, but I do have the same problem. Also running NT4.0sp6a on a Dell Poweredge 1300, an Adaptec AHA-2940U2W and a new HP StorageWorks Ultrium 460 (with firmware F48D).

I'm going to try a few things like update drivers, flash firmware etc, but if in the meantime anybody has any bright ideas please let me know.

Thanks, Andrew.
CA1127876
Occasional Advisor

Re: Ultrium 215e and WinNT Error ID 11

Alright, I've flashed the motherboard BIOS, the SCSI card BIOS, and updated the SCSI card drivers. No improvement.

Looking at the Backup Exec job logs, it begins to verify (and does indeed begin to verify the data on the tape), but then fails after 5-10 seconds with "The request could not be performed because of an I/O device error", accompanied by Event 11 in the Event Viewer ("The driver detected a controller error on \Device\ScsiPort1").

I'm pretty sure this isn't a Backup Exec issue (using version 7.3, BTW), I think it's either an Adaptec issue or an HP issue.

So, if anyone can come up with any suggestions, I'd be happy to hear them.

Thanks, Andrew.
CA1127876
Occasional Advisor

Re: Ultrium 215e and WinNT Error ID 11

Me again -

It seems the problem is not restricted to just verifying the data. It seems to be any generic read operation, such as a catalog or a restore.

This means the problem is more serious than first thought.

Now I'm really looking forward to someone replying to this :-)

Andrew
CA843380
Valued Contributor

Re: Ultrium 215e and WinNT Error ID 11

Hi Andrew,

Can you download LTT and install it on the system with the tape drive please. Can you use it to generate a support ticket and save it in ltt format, zip it up and attach it here. In this way we can see if the drive is geenrating any errors and if so what sort of error.

Cheers,

Dave Dewar

Link for LTT is:

http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/DriverDownload.jsp?pnameOID=238676&locale=en_US&taskId=135тМй=en&cc=us&prodTypeId=12169&prodSeriesId=238671&swEnvOID=24
CA1127876
Occasional Advisor

Re: Ultrium 215e and WinNT Error ID 11

Hi Dave, thanks for the reply. I downloaded L&TT and installed. I opted to also install the ASPI driver at the same time, and then rebooted.

Upon opening L&TT, I am promoted for the choice of access method. Choosing NT Miniport ends up with the error: "L&TT could not identify the correct NT miniport driver to use for access to the drive" and doesn't let me do much else.

Choosing ASPI detects the device successfully. I have used it to generate a support ticket, which you should find attached to this message.

Please let me know if there is anything else I can do to help you diagnose the problem!

Andrew