Fibre Array Information" active/Inactive ??

[Ross Humphryes]

Hi Folks

We have HP SAN equiptment and Fibre attached (via NSR)MSL5025SL tape Libraries.

Many W2k & W2k3 servers are attached to the SAN via KGPSA-xx FC HBA's and these systems can all see the tape devices.

We backup to tape using NetWorker but we get quite a lot (too many in my mind) of the following types of errors:

Source: HPQDLT EventID: 7
The device, \Device\Tape0, has a bad block.

Source: CPQKGPSA EventID: 9
The device, \Device\Scsi\CPQKGPSA1, did not respond within the timeout period.

We can't be unlucky enough to be getting so many faulty tapes. We buy new tapes and these are generally Maxell SDLT1 tapes, something must be wrong in our setup.

Removable Storage Manager is disabled because Legato NetWorker has its own Library controller and all the drivers appear to be up to date.

I was wondering if the Compaq/HP Management Agent "Fibre Array Information" needs to be disabled (Inactive). Could somebody explain if the Fibre Array Information agent could be causing the problem and maybe explain why?

Thanks very much
Ross

[Marino Meloni_1 · Accepted solution]

Yes Fibre Agent is know as disrupting backups:

http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/Document.jsp?objectID=PSD_ES040611_CW01

But also TUR should be disabled:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;842411

marino

[Ross Humphryes]

Hi Marino
I would like to say thanks so far.
Your response is really helpful and free :-) so I hope I can help in return sometime in the future.

Our Insight Managements Agent software is a mix of 5.50.0.0 to 7.10.0.0 but apparently this issue is addressed in version 7.20.0.0 and later. We plan to update to version 7.30.0.0 as a first step and then see what we get so that if a next step is needed we can action one.

I would rather update the agents first and then if necessary disable the "Fibre Channel Information" agent or try that HPUtility if the problem persists. I dont want to disable TUR because we have alerting triggered on the Plug&Play events so that we know if a tape drive has gone offline.

We have three MSL5026 Libraries on this SAN (one charcoal SDLT160/320 & two Beige SDLT 110/220), that's 5 tape devices and the problem happens on different devices (so not the same each time). I have not contacted HP at this time in regards to the possibility of a faulty drive because I am not sure if I have one but will investigate this once I have re-assessed the situation with regards to the agents.

I have looked at the Library timeouts in NetWorker (we use 7.1.3) and have adjusted these to 30secs but it doesn't actually change the situation, we still get the EventID 9 from CPQKGPSA "The device, \Device\Scsi\CPQKGPSA2, did not respond within the timeout period." Interestingly though, we don't get these errors from all agents, only some but I think once we have standardised on the version of the agent and which are active/inactive we should get something more consistent.

I don't like the bad block errors though and I am not sure to be honest if these are really faulty tapes or malfunctioning drives. The drives are not cleaned regularly, there is a cleaning tape in the Library which is automatically used when the hardware determines that cleaning is required, I believe this is the correct way to do it. All equipment is in a proper cooled and ventilated server room. I may have too consider changing tape brands.

The Agent software is being updated this week so watch this space.

[PB75]

Hi,

I'm wondering if this is still an issue with the newer support pack versions (currently 7.70). Actually our "Fibre Array Information" Agent is disabled and all the other things (disable TUR, etc.) are implemented. Backup on SAN attached Libraries run fine.

The drawback is: without fibre agent there is no monitoring of the Servers FC-HBA. All of our servers are dual attached, so I'll never find out if a card/link is broken until i monitor the Port state on the FC-Switch or the second FC-Link goes down...

anyone knows a better solution to monitor the state of FC-HBA on Servers without Fibre Agent? Is Fibre Agent in PSP7.70 still causing problems with SAN Libraries?

Thanks!
Patrick