I've never working with this library, but have some questions/ideas. 1. Are both libraries "identical" and do they have same firmware for library and drives? How about configuration on the library?
2. They are both connected to same TSM server you say. Do they use the same HBA's on the TSM server or different? Do all HBA's have up to date firmware? 3. What about SAN switches? Use the same ones or different? Also when library goes offline, can you get the SAN guys to show or give you logs of the switches and see if any glitch there? 4. You say happens about once a month. So I don't "assume", is this library in a Data Center and on UPS power? If so, then one thing that comes to mind is that Generator tests happen once a month. Any correlation with any Data Center wide maintenance? 5. Why are you concentrating on the Robot? Did you get errors somewhere that point to that? 6. Do you use encryption on either or both libraries? Do they use the same "Key Manager"? 7. I wouldn't just replace this library because of problems. May have same with new/same model if it is external! Just a few.. David Longo >>> "Dury, John C." <jd...@duqlight.com> 4/5/2011 6:10 PM >>> We purchased an STK SL500 tape library with 4 LTO4 drives in it a few years ago and we have had nothing but problems with it, almost from the beginning. It is fully loaded with LTO4 cartridges (about 160) and seems to randomly just crash and take all of the drives offline to TSM. We also have a second SL500 that is at a remote site and connected to the same TSM server , and it has no problems at all. The remote SL500 has copies (backup stg pool) of the local SL500. We've gone round and round with STK/Oracle support and they have actually come onsite and physically replaced the entire robot and all of it's parts, several times and they can never find a reason as to what is causing it to go offline. Keep in mind this has been happening about once a month or so for over a year. My questions to all of you is not so much what could be wrong (although if you have ideas, that would be great also), but, we are considering a new robot and are hoping to be able to use or reuse our existing LTO4 tapes. Right now it has about 80 scratches so if we were to goto a second library, I should be able to have both defined to TSM and move the data from one to the other after putting some of the scratches in the new library and labeling/initializing them until all data is in the new library and then I can light the old one on fire (j/k) ! Like most IT departments we are severely budget constrained so we would like to reuse the tape drives and the tape cartridges and only purchase a robot that can handle 160 slots or so. Suggestions if this is even an option or which robots and/or models to look at? Remember, very little budget for this if I could even get it approved at all but we really don't know what else to do with the bad SL500 at this point and we have a project coming up that is going to increase the amount and flow of data to our TSM system significantly within the new few years. Help! John ##################################### This message is for the named person's use only. It may contain private, proprietary, or legally privileged information. No privilege is waived or lost by any mistransmission. If you receive this message in error, please immediately delete it and all copies of it from your system, destroy any hard copies of it, and notify the sender. You must not, directly or indirectly, use, disclose, distribute, print, or copy any part of this message if you are not the intended recipient. Health First reserves the right to monitor all e-mail communications through its networks. Any views or opinions expressed in this message are solely those of the individual sender, except (1) where the message states such views or opinions are on behalf of a particular entity; and (2) the sender is authorized by the entity to give such views or opinions. #####################################
