New SDLT 600 giving servo sensor errors

[CA1428942]

I am running a new SDLT 600 drive (2weeks old) using Arcserve 11.5
It gives me a lot of E6084 servo drive sensor errors. cleaning tape seems to help for a day or so but then I get the errors again. The media is new also. any ideas

[meloni]

be sure your evironment is clean, away from Laser printers, and inpact printer. Away form doors and air conditioner.
it appear something is contamining your drive if a cleaning cycle help.
Another point to investigate is to be sure cartriges are ok, never dropped, and genuine one.
marino

[CA1428942]

The drive is in a clean computer room environment, there are no laserprinters in the area. The media are all new HP SDLT 600 tapes. I ran the HP Tape and Library tool this evening and the tests all came back fine. The server is a HP DL380 G4, the scsi card is an HP ultra 320 2 port hba and is plugged into the 133mhz slot. The server os is win 2003 server. I have a sony ait 260e on the other scsi port and it backs up faster and more reliably than the sdlt drive.

[meloni]

ok, servo errors are usualy refered to mechanical errors, positioning, etc, As the SDLT600 is a high speed device and there are tracking sistems to keep the r/w head aligned with the tape, be sure it do not suffer of vibration, temperature, etc.
Also if you use ltt, it will give you some hints, you will also have the opportunity to run the Assesment test, that will tell you if the problem is comming from the drive, or if there may be errors from your application interpreting sense code...

[Justin Beaven]

We have also experienced these problems when running backups.

We are running a Windows 2000 Server (SP4) on a ML570. We are also using BrightStor ARCserve Backup r11.5 SP1.

We were originally backing this server up on a SDLT 160/320 which worked fine. However, because of the large amounts of data we upgraded to a SDLT 600, since we have done this we have had no shortage of problems, we also experience the "servo drive sensor errors"....amongst others.

To try and resolve it we have upgraded the SCSI card, replaced the SCSI cables with longer/shorter cables, connected the SCSI card to different ports within the server, etc. We also have another SDLT 600 in our DR site which we have swapped over.

We were also running BrightStor ARCserve Backup r11.5 SP2 but we backed out of this to SP1.

To date, the backup is now reliable using a 1M SCSI cable and BrightStor ARCserve Backup r11.5 SP1. The SDLT 600 tape drive's firmware has also been updated, from V040 to V041.

Although the backups have been running reliably for a short while, it is to soon to say if we have resolved the problem.

We now have a new issue when trying to restore the server in DR. Using BrightStor ARCserve Backup r11.5 SP1 we are unable to merge the largest session on a tape, the session is over 200GB in size, it fails with SCSI errors.

ARCserve activity log...

E3841 - Unable to find session number.
W3823 - Unable to find media.
W3884 - Unable to position media catalog file.
W3855 - Unable to position media.
E6300 - Windows NT SCSI Port Error

Windows System Eventlog

Error Event ID: 9

The device, \Device\SCSI\cpqcissm1, did not respond within the timeout period.

Error Event ID: 11

The driver detected a controller error on \Device\SCSI\cpqcissm1.

We get the same results using a ML50. ML370 G0 and a ML370 G3, we have also tried different SCSI cards.

Any ideas? It is only since we upgraded to a HP StorageWorks SDLT 600 that we experienced these problems.

Thanks,

Justin

[CA1428942]

I spoke with HP, they sent me a new drive, performed the first backup last night with no problems, as the other poster said though, too soon to tell.

[Justin Beaven]

Hi Glenn,

Please please please can you let me know how things progress with this!

Do you know what version of firmware your old tape drive had? And also what version is on the new tape drive? The HP tape library tools will be able to tell you this information.

You said you only had errors during a backup. Using ARCserve have you tried doing a merge from a successful backup? If so was the merge successful or did you have errors similar to the ones I previously posted.

I would be very interested to find out this information, it would be a BIG BIG help!

Kind regards,

Justin

[CA1428942]

The firmware on the original drive was v040, I upgraded it to v041 but it did not make a difference. The drive that HP sent me is v040, I have not bothered to upgrade the firmware as it does not seem to be a factor. The arcserve version is 11.5 sp1. It is currently running on a DL380/G4. I had also tried it on another DL380/G4, a brand new DL360/G4p, I had also tried a different ultra 320 2 channel scsi hba, I also tried a LSI Logic 2 channel MegaRaid. the problems never changed. I will keep this thread updated with anything new.

[CA1428942]

I knew I would forget something, I have not tried a merge. I will try one today or tomorrow and let you know

[CA1428942]

OK, 2 successful merges today. The first one was only 40 gig, so I merged a second one that was just over 400gig, both successful, no errors. I hope my issues are over.

[CA1428942]

What a great night, two successful backups in a row !!! and CARDS WIN !!! Homer Simpson is in the background screaming WOOHOO !!!
Go Cards !

[Justin Beaven]

Hi Glenn,

That is good news, I have my fingers and toes crossed for you!

After updating the firmware to V041 on the 15th October, our daily backups ran successfully until the 22nd October, last nights failed with the "E6084 Drive hardware error - servo or sensor" error message in the ARCserve Activity Log.

When you logged a support call with HP, did you get the impression that there were known problems with the HP SDLT 600 tape drive?, or was it a case of you performing the HP engineers troubleshooting steps, before they agreed to swap of the drives? Presumably they asked you to run diagnostics using the HP StorageWorks Library and Tape Tools, was this successful?

Please can you let me know if you get a repeat of the errors using the replacement tape drive.

Kind regards,

Justin

[CA1428942]

The did not give me the impression that there was a known problem with these drives. However, I had done the HP tape tools tests prior to calling HP, I relayed that information, I think the biggest thing is that I just got this drive new, so they did a swap for me. Since getting the new drive, I have gotten a good backup for almost 1 1/2 weeks now, even did a couple of restores. The drive works like I originally expected it to.