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Do I have to delete tape device after firmware update?

 
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Stuart Green
Frequent Advisor

Do I have to delete tape device after firmware update?

I am in the process of updating firmware on several of our SDLT devices.
I have the note that details how to perform the update using scu, set nexus, and then download firmware image. Have performed 1 drive so far successfully. But, have had to delete the HWID in hwmgr and rescan SCSI, for my backup software to see drive again. No other commands seemed to work.
(tried hwmgr -refresh)

This delete part; is it necessary? Or is there another command within hwmgr to rebuild entry for that HWID.

OS: Tru64 5.1B pk3
SDLT160/320 drives
updating to firmware v75

Thanks for suggestions
Stuart
12 REPLIES 12
Michael Schulte zur Sur
Honored Contributor

Re: Do I have to delete tape device after firmware update?

Hi Stuart,

does the device name change?
Do you reset the device?
What backup software are you using?
What does mt status say after update of the firmware and without hwmgr -delete

greetings,

Michael
Ravi_8
Honored Contributor

Re: Do I have to delete tape device after firmware update?

Hi Stuart

No need to delete the tape device after firmware update. all the device configurations will be in kernel, updating firmware doesn't affect kernel.
never give up
Stuart Green
Frequent Advisor

Re: Do I have to delete tape device after firmware update?

Procedure I am following is
1) DOWN the drive in the software (Veritas NetBackup 4.5)
2) connect to the scsi device in scu and apply firmware then exit
3) query devices in the software, and device no longer shows up.

During this time at no point is anything powered off/reset. Device name stays same.

Of course "hwmgr get attributes -id nn" still shows old firmware number at this point also.

Have not performed a mt status, will try this on the next drive.
Johan Brusche
Honored Contributor

Re: Do I have to delete tape device after firmware update?


1) -refresh was the wrong option, it deletes not currently registered components and removes stale scsi path's. The option to use after addition of new scsi devices is: "hwmgr -scan scsi" .

2) That this is necessary after a firmware update can only signify that the firmware update also changed the WWID presented to the system. If you have a record of the old wwid (eg from hwmgr -sho scsi -full or a previous sys_check) it probably is different from what you see now after the scsi-scan.

3)If the firmware update changes the wwid, and you want to reuse the old /dev/tape-name, you must also use the /sbin/dsfmgr command to remap the new tape-name to the old-tapename.
Use the -e or -m switch to the dsfmgr depending on the fact if the old name is free for use or not.

Rgds,
Johan.

_JB_
Mobeen_1
Esteemed Contributor
Solution

Re: Do I have to delete tape device after firmware update?

Stuart.
From my experience its absolutely necessary if you want to be safe.

What happens is if you are having your server attached to a 3rd Party backup server like Tivoli Storage Manager, normally all your tape devices will be defined on that server as well.

Basically when ever a firware upgrade is carried out at OS level, its recommended that the devices are deleted and reconfigured both at your OS level and backup server level.

What we normally do is

1. Delete the devices from OS level
2. Delete the devices from backup server
3. Perform the firmware upgrade
4. define the devices back OS level and
5. define the devices back on backup server

Technically speaking this process may or may not be necessary, but we have seen that some times there are bound to be some issues like I/O read failures or communication failures between the device and server. So to avoid this we practise the above method. We seldom encounter any of these issues since

Fyi
We are using TSM, IBM 3494 Tape Lib and 6 IBM 3590 E1A drives.

regards
Mobeen
Stuart Green
Frequent Advisor

Re: Do I have to delete tape device after firmware update?

Thanks Mobeen, for sharing your experience. Ideally I should just treat this as a faulty/replaced drive. Seem's like your enterprise backup software behaves/acts similar to Veritas.

After deleting the device, I do use scan scsi command then dsfmgr -m command to put the drive back. But do end up having to recreate the drives in the software also.

Stuart
Michael Schulte zur Sur
Honored Contributor

Re: Do I have to delete tape device after firmware update?

Stuart,

dsfmgr -m

that implies to me, that after the hwmgr -scan scsi the tape gets a new device?

When you run a hwmgr -scan scsi without a delete, do you get an additional device?

Michael
Stuart Green
Frequent Advisor

Re: Do I have to delete tape device after firmware update?

Michael,
For clarity,

I delete the tape device ie tape0

hwmgr -del scsi .......

hwmgr scan scsi

new tapeNN device appears

dsfmgr -m tapeNN tape0

Stuart

Thanks for your suggestions.
But for software consistency the only way I believe to perform this is to delete the devices in software and at hwmgr level and then readd them. Very slow process when devices are shared across several servers.

Michael Schulte zur Sur
Honored Contributor

Re: Do I have to delete tape device after firmware update?

Stuart,

this is what puzzles me. Does the firmware update result in a new wwid? Otherwise there should be no reason to create a device with a different number.

Michael