Attached is a note from STK regarding tape cleaning options on the L700.
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To let the backup app determine when to clean a drive Auto Clean is turned off in the library.
STK libraries, with Auto Clean enabled, will present status to the backup application that a drive is being cleaned. The drives all present to the library that they need to be cleaned and the drive vendors like this because drives should only be cleaned when necessary - prevents excessive head wear.
With Auto Clean enabled in a library a clean will occur when the drive tells the library that it needs to be cleaned. This means that a clean operation could occur in the middle of a multi-volume backup causing problems for the backup application.
None of the backup applications make use of the status the library presents to say that a clean operation is occurring, they all have different methods of cleaning drives. Some base cleaning on number of mounts and some on hours of use - drive vendors don't like either method as they only want a drive to be cleaned when they determine that it is necessary.
Because the backup apps don't make use of the library status notification we usually suggest that customer's let the backup app determine when to clean a device. This means that a clean will occur when the backup app wants to do one, this way you don't encounter cleanings during multi-volume backups.
Veritas NetBackup put out a big patch recently that addressed this cleaning issue (and other issues), I think in patch 3.4.1 - you will have to check the Veritas site. NetBackup will now detect that a drive is being cleaned and 'wait' for this to end. In the case of a DLT drive this could take 20-30 minutes because the DLT drives never use the same area of a cleaning tape, they always space forward to a new area on the cleaning tape.
-----Original Message----- From: ilya.birman@abnamro.com [mailto:ilya.birman@abnamro.com] Sent: Wednesday, October 31, 2001 10:55 AM To: toasters@mathworks.com Subject: Veritas NetBackup 3.4 NDMP backup failure
----- Forwarded by Ilya Birman/US/ABNAMRO/NL on 10/31/2001 01:00 PM -----
Ilya Birman To: 'toasters <'toasters@mathworks.com'" 10/31/2001 toasters@mathworks.com 10:31 AM cc: support@veritas.com, support@storagtek.com Subject: Veritas NetBackup 3.4 NDMP backup failure
We have a 760 NetApp Filer that we backup using NetBackup 3.4 via NDMP ( StorageTek L700) The volume of the backup job is large and spans across numerous tapes. Often StorageTek L700 detects that tape drive needs to be cleaned and in the middle of the backup job, while backup job switches tapes. This causes Veritas to DOWN the tape drive. Have anyone run into this problem. Is there a setting you can set ( turning off Auto Clean is not an option) TIA Ilya
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