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Utilizing all tape drives in a library

  • 4 December 2023
  • 7 comments
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M
Userlevel 4

I am confused (not an unusual occurrence ...). I have a LTO-7 tape library, with 3 tape drives. Right now, I have 9 tape jobs listed as running (we ran out of tapes this weekend, so I just loaded more). But only 2 tape drives have tapes loaded and are writing, the 3rd is idle. And I’m not sure why … there are empty tapes in the pool for the jobs (all jobs use the same pool), as well as FREE tapes in the FREE pool.

So why is my drive idle? I don’t see any option that seems to say “Use only 2 of the 3 drives in the library at any one time”. I must be missing something here, but I can’t figure out what. It’s not an option for the individual tape jobs, right? I have those set to use at most 2 drives. I assumed that meant just for that one tape job, not for all jobs that are executing. 

So why isn’t Veeam loading a tape in that 3rd drive, and starting to clear my backlog? What have I done wrong?

 

Thanks.

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Best answer by MikeLeone 4 December 2023, 20:38

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7 comments

Chris.Childerhose
Userlevel 7
Badge +20

You are not doing anything wrong - Veeam tends to be slow when processing tape drives and loading tapes.  They do many updates to the database during the process.  How long has it been running since you added more tapes?  I would try to give it some time provided it hasn’t been hours since you loaded the tapes.

Also check the logs - C:\ProgramData\Veeam\Backup

Chris Childerhose - VMCA2022 | VMCE2023 | Veeam Vanguard 7* | Veeam Legend 3* | vExpert 5* | VCAP-DCV/VCP-DCV | Object First Ace | Cisco Champion | Twitter: @cchilderhose | Blog Site – https://just-virtualization.tech
MicoolPaul
Userlevel 7
Badge +20

Hi, how many tape drives show within your tape infrastructure? Are all the tape drives within the same partition within your tale infrastructure?

 

Lets start here.

Michael Paul - #VeeamLegend | #VeeamVanguard | Veeam Certified Architect | VMware vExpert | https://micoolpaul.com | Twitter: @MicoolPaul | Mastodon: @micoolpaul@masto.nu | Bluesky: @micoolpaul.bsky.social
M
Userlevel 4

You are not doing anything wrong - Veeam tends to be slow when processing tape drives and loading tapes.  They do many updates to the database during the process.  How long has it been running since you added more tapes?  I would try to give it some time provided it hasn’t been hours since you loaded the tapes.

Also check the logs - C:\ProgramData\Veeam\Backup

 

I added more tapes approx 3.5 hours ago (there were none in FREE and none in the pool had any free space). When I added them, 2 were loaded into 2 of the drives, the 3rd drive just sits there, empty and idle.

M
Userlevel 4

Hi, how many tape drives show within your tape infrastructure? Are all the tape drives within the same partition within your tale infrastructure?

 

Lets start here.

All 3 tape drives show in the infrastructure, under my one and only tape library. I only have 1 partition, as far as I know.

Chris.Childerhose
Userlevel 7
Badge +20

You are not doing anything wrong - Veeam tends to be slow when processing tape drives and loading tapes.  They do many updates to the database during the process.  How long has it been running since you added more tapes?  I would try to give it some time provided it hasn’t been hours since you loaded the tapes.

Also check the logs - C:\ProgramData\Veeam\Backup

 

I added more tapes approx 3.5 hours ago (there were none in FREE and none in the pool had any free space). When I added them, 2 were loaded into 2 of the drives, the 3rd drive just sits there, empty and idle.

Ok it should not take that long to get going so maybe a reboot of the VBR server to kick start it.  This is the one part of Veeam I find finicky.  

Chris Childerhose - VMCA2022 | VMCE2023 | Veeam Vanguard 7* | Veeam Legend 3* | vExpert 5* | VCAP-DCV/VCP-DCV | Object First Ace | Cisco Champion | Twitter: @cchilderhose | Blog Site – https://just-virtualization.tech
M
Userlevel 4

UPDATE:

I was just looing at my Media Pool properties, and it was set to 

Enable parallel processing for tape jobs using this media pool

  • Jobs pointed to this media pool can use up to 2 tape drives simultaneously

I wonder if that is my problem. All my jobs are in the same media pool. I have changed that setting to 3, we’ll see if that helps.

FURTHER UPDATE: Yep, now it’s loaded a tape in that 3rd drive and is servicing a job. 👍

 

So I guess that was it. An error on my part, as I suspected. If I utilized more than 1 media pool, then that option might make more sense. But since I don’t, I want all 3 drives to be used simultaneously.

Chris.Childerhose
Userlevel 7
Badge +20

Glad to hear you resolved the issue and all drives are running now.  Never dawned on me about parallel processing. 😂

Chris Childerhose - VMCA2022 | VMCE2023 | Veeam Vanguard 7* | Veeam Legend 3* | vExpert 5* | VCAP-DCV/VCP-DCV | Object First Ace | Cisco Champion | Twitter: @cchilderhose | Blog Site – https://just-virtualization.tech

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