DAT 72 Drive replacement question

[Chrisl_2]

hi all.

I have a 1u StorageWorks rackmount enclosure that has 2 internal DAT 72 tape drives. The StorageWorks enclosure has 2 scsi ports. Connected to the scsi ports are 2 RP3410 hosts running 11iv2.

I need to replace one of the DAT drives. Can I simply power down the StorageWorks enclosure, disconnect the scsi cable, replace the drive, reconnect, and power up? Will the hosts be ok with that? I would like to avoid host downtime or reboot.

TIA!!!!

[Viney Kumar]

Hi Chrisl

you can do but confirm both the tape drive will free.

[Andrew Rutter · Accepted solution]

hi,

you should be fine with that in my opinion.

I would do a full ioscan on the system to force a frsk hardware scan and check there seen again, and if not you may need to issue an insf for the path.

check the jumpers on the drive are the same and it should use the same scsi id, and use the same dev files.

if it takes awhile you may get some messages in the monitors about missing tape drive, just be as quick as possible getting it back together

Andy

[TTr]

You shouldn't need to power off the entire enclosure. You should be able to power off the DAT drive alone and pull it out. This way you don't impact the other good drive and the other server.
One thing you must check is if there are any other devices (disks) attached to the same SCSI bus that this tape drive is. In that case you could still pull the drive but there is a chance you may temporarily interrupt i/o in the scsi bus.
I have the same enclosure but the 3U model and can do what I described without any issues but in my case the tape drives are alone in their own SCSI bus.

[Chrisl_2]

Thanks for your answers. Each tape drive in the enclosure is dedicated on a scsi connection, so I should be ok there. I'll replace the drive as quickly as possible and see what happens. I'll update this thread with my experience.

[Chrisl_2]

Ok, I powered down the enclosure, removed the old DAT, installed the new DAT, used the same SCSI ID.

Fired the enclosure up, tried to do a backup and the system didn't recognize /dev/rmt/0mn. Did an ioscan, saw the tape drive was claimed.

Went to /dev/rmt and a dir listing showed all the device files, all dated 8/31/2006, when I first built the system. Poked around a bit more, suddenly /dev/rmt/0mn worked fine. Back to /dev/rmt and a dir listing showed 0mn dated today! Spooky! (I DIDN"T build new device files??)