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Category Archives: Common

Data Protector Cases and HP Support

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Software is not free from bugs and a feature in HP Data Protector might not work as expected or will not deliver the expected result. In these cases you will need support from HP to identify, analyse and eventually solve a potential bug. Below you will find the steps to open a new case in a fast and efficient manner.

Support: The easiest way to get HP support for Data Protector is the Software Support Portal – http://support.openview.hp.com/

Howto: A handbook to the SSO portal can be downloaded here: HPSoftwareCustomerSupportHandbook (November 2011). The most current version can be downloaded from HP: http://support.openview.hp.com/pdf/HP_Software_Customer_Support_Handbook.pdf

How to open a case:

1 To open a new case login to SSO portal (http://support.openview.hp.com/) using your passport account and click on “Case Manager”.

Case

2 On the next page choose “Submit a new case” and you will get the following page:

Case

3 Select all the mandatoryoptions. Please keep in mind: “Severity” is set to the lowest priority 4 per default! Depending on your own needs, select a appropriate severity!

4 Within next screen fill in all details (problem description, etc.) to the case. In addition you may upload screenshots and debugs to the case.

5 I recommend to run get_info and to attach the report to the case. The report can be generated using: "c:\Program Files\OmniBack\bin\utilns\get_info.exe" > c:\temp\case.txt (example). In this way support receives all details from your environment which might be needed to solve the case.

Severity:

Case

View Case History: Wihin Case Manager you can monitor your support case. Please go to the Case Manager in the SSO Portal, there you’ll see all open support cases. For the closed ones please click on “all cases for my SAID”.

Special thanks to Robert Sakic who prepared this article.

NSS Volumes on Linux OES with DP 6.20

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When you need to backup NSS volumes on a Linux OES server with Data Protector 6.2 it might be the case that the NSS volumes are not listed within GUI and you might receive the following error: 12:1304 The mountpoint/file-system cannot be backed up. In this case you need to modify the file /opt/omni/lbin/.util. Search for i.e. -t ext3 or -t reiserfs, you will find it only once. Now you can insert -t nssvol. In this way the disk agent can discover the NSS volumes during the df process and the volumes are listed as separated mountpoints in the GUI. By the way this trick will also work for other filesystems on Linux; you only need to modify .util with the corresponding filesystem. And at the end as Novell consultant from old school I’d like to say: Long lives NSS!

What is device polling

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Probably most customers using Data Protector with a Fibre Channel Tape Library attached expierienced this problem: a SCSI Reset during the backup including destroyed media. What happened? The drive was flooded with SCSI commands – device polling was the cause.
Polling is the behaviour of a service which polls tape drives and library controller via IFC (Interface Controller) or NSR (Network Storage Router) using SCSI commands frequently. This may influence running backups, as the NSR must process additional commands, which mostly come not from the backup software.
Results

  • Changed backup speed
  • I/O errors
  • The backup software recognizes the media as poor
  • A tape drive will be set to offline
  • The transfer rated decreases
  • The tape drive can not stream

Known serives causing these errors:

  • Network scanner
  • Removable Storage Manager
  • Tape driver
  • OVOSAM using old Tachyon drivers
  • Insight Management Agents (SIM)
  • Retrosopect / Retrorun (Macintosh)

Recommendation: Deactivate polling on all servers where tape drives are attached.

SystemState Backup Windows – Error [81:52]

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[Critical] From: VBDA@CLIENT "CONFIGURATION:" Time: 21.09.2010 09:20:32
[81:52] /CONFIGURATION
Not a valid mount point => aborting

However following the link will not help at all. In file debug.log no usefull informatino is stored, furthermore the file autodr.log is not created, as the backup was aborted. In general a reboot might help, however might no be needed. In my case I analysed the server in more detail and found in <omnihome>\tmp\config  a previous created backup of CONFIGURATION (which was aborted). As solution I deleted all stuff in <omnihome>\tmp\config and backup of the systemstate of the Windows server was working as expected again.