Windows server cannot boot with 4 FC drives tape library connected

[KEN_SYD]

Hi All,

I'm having an issue that Windows 2008 server stay at booting phase for 15 mins with 4 HP FC drive connected.

Backup server HBA and tape drives connected via FC switch.
The story is:
Windows booted normally with 1 FC drive before. I then connected 3 more drives to FC switch and all 4 drives appear in Backup server via Device Manager as well as Backup software.
I then rebooted server, server stay at boot phase (bars continuously moving from left to right)for 15 mins without any further.
Then I disconnected all 3 new drives, Windows booted up fine.

Does anyone have idea what could cause the issue?
What is Windows doing at that phase with tape drives?
I gonna do more troubleshooting but some of you may have a clue.

Thank you.

[Jan Soska]

Hello,
- check your fibre channel adapter boot bios setting. Make sure it is disabled if you do not boot from SAN.
- do you have proper multipath software installed?


Jan

[KEN_SYD]

Thanks Jan,

I will check HBA bios to see if it enabled.
I'm sorry, but why do we need multipath software on backup server while each drive has only 1 FC port?

[Jan Soska]

Hello,
do you see each disk only one way? usualy if your storage has 2 controllers, you shold see disk in 2 ways per fabric.
anyway, we had similar issue with early build of win2008, without multipath it refused to start, but maybe i am wrong...

jan

[KEN_SYD]

Hi Jan,
I see 2 paths for SAN LUNs but just only one path for tape drives.
My server boot up normally with 1 tape drive and SAN LUNs connected.
Issue happened when 4 tape drives all connected.
Thank you for your info.

[Johan Guldmyr]

Hey!

Which fc hba, tape drives and library do you have? Not old drivers, OS patches, firmware on HBA/tape drives I hope?

Probably a good idea to have multipath software installed anyway for your disk array LUNs.

As they are FC attached, you could also try to zone in the server with two tape drives, then tree, then four. Maybe this way you can find if there is a specific tape drive that is causing the issue.