Backup problems with MSL2024

[Ian Pennington_1]

Hi
I have DL380G5 8TB storage server. This has SC11Xe HBA fitted to which is connected a MSL2024 LTO-4 Ultrium 1840 SCSI Drive Library. All firmware and drivers are latest versions.
Backup software is CA BrightStor 11.5 SP3 When running a backup it fails with the CA software reporting unknown hardware SCSI error, but the Server and Tape library show no hardware errors.
Rebuilt system with recovery DVD and installed CA BrightStor 12 and got same error.
Replaced server and library hardware completely with new and got same error with CA 11.5 and 12.
Rebuilt with DVD and installed Backup Exec v 12 and got same error!!! However, Backup exec forum said thet the HP Management Agents were know to cause this problem. Rebuilt original hardware, disabled HP Agents and installed CA 11.5 SP3 and backups now run fine. 1.2TB in 4.5 hours.
So, how do I get round this as I want to remote monitor server with Agents.
Anyone seen this before?

[Arend Lensen]

Ian,

make sure you are using the latest firmware in the library controller. Does it happen almost around the same time?.
Is that perhaps 24 hours after a library reboot?. The native fibre drives do not have such problems with fibre agents as the scsi variant with the NSR but better disable them.

Regards,
Arend

[Ian Pennington_1]

As I said, firm ware/drivers are latest versions. Failure runs from at 45GB to 250GB backup, totally random. Replicated on two seperate sets of hardware and with two different backup software packages. What is HP playing at!!

[Arend Lensen]

Ian,

Can you post a LTT support ticket here, taken asap after a failure please?.
Many, many things can cause a backup to abort, it maybe has nothing to do with hardware. You wrote that u used the SC11Xe adapter. It might be worth to emphasize that as not all adapters are supported with all libraries.
Can you please have a look at the compatibility table at hp.com/go/ebs.

Regards,
Arend

[Curtis Ballard]

There is one issue being worked that sounds similar to this which only seems to occur with Microsoft storport.sys drivers after 5.2.3790.3959

For that issue it's possible to work around the problem temporarily by loading an older version of storport.sys

HP is working with all of the different companies involved to figure out where the issue is and a solution will be made available as soon as possible.

[Curtis Ballard]

I've heard good results for working around this problem by changing a registry entry for the StorPort Driver. See http://support.microsoft.com/kb/932755 for details.

An excerpt from that document for the registry entry that needs changed:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Enum\SCSI\\\DeviceParameters\Storport\
Value - BusyRetryCount
Type - DWORD
Data - 20 Decimal (default)
Range - number of retries

I don't know what the magic value is that works but 20 was probably just a guess for a good retry value. I would recommend you change it to 32 or 64.

[Steve Higgins_1]

We have been experiencing the same exact problems with the following setup: DL320s G1 server, SC44Ge HBA connected to MSL2024 library with 2 SAS LTO-3 Ultrium 920 drives. All firmware is up to date. I just updated the Storport driver to 5.2.3790.4021, but don't see the option in the registry to change the BusyRetryCount. I also just updated the Insight agents from 7.80 to 8.10.
Hopefully this resolves the issue.
I don't want to disable the HP agents, that is not a valid workaround in my opinion.
Some other thoughts: we only see the issue when both tape drives are powered on. If I disabled one, backups are successful. When both are enabled, it doesn't matter if they are both actively being used, it will fail with a Bus reset.

Crossing fingers for tonight's backups.

[Curtis Ballard]

You have to create the BusyRetryCount registry entry. It isn't there by default.

[Steve Higgins_1]

I tried that and it did not work. Disabling the Insight agents also didn't help, though the drives themselves don't seem to be going offline for 2 minutes and causing the backup to fail completely. One backup will complete, while the other sits there and waits for a long time and finally starts backing up 10-15 minutes after the first one is done. There are still LSI_SAS controller errors in the system log every 5 minutes while this is happening.

[Curtis Ballard]

Can you post the LSI SAS event binary data from the event log in word format?