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Grau Infinistore Tape Library


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I'm having troubles getting Retrospect 7.0 Multiserver to work with my Grau Infinistore L8 Tape Lib. The tape lib is able to emulate a Exabyte x200. Retrospect seems to recognize it, as I can see and move all the tapes/slots. But the problem is, that is does not recognize the tapedrives correctly.

The hardware configuration of the computer on witch retrospect is running on is as follows:

- one SCSI HVD Card connected to 2 AIT2-Drives. These two drives are mounted in the Tape Library, so the gripper is able to load them.

- one SCSI LVD Card connected to the tape library controller-PC that moves the gripper. This controller-PC emulates a Exabyte X200 on the SCSI-bus.

 

As the drives are directly connected via SCSI to the machine that is also running Retrospect, the drives are listed separatly and the tape library appears without drives.

 

If I now try to load a tape into a drive nothing happens, because Retrospect thinks, that there are no drives present in the tape library.

 

Any ideas how I could get this to work?

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I'm having troubles getting Retrospect 7.0 Multiserver to work with my Grau Infinistore L8 Tape Lib. The tape lib is able to emulate a Exabyte x200. Retrospect seems to recognize it, as I can see and move all the tapes/slots. But the problem is, that is does not recognize the tapedrives correctly.

 

Any ideas how I could get this to work?

Two suggestions:

 

(1) your copy of Retrospect is very old. Consider updating (current version is 7.6.x).

 

(2) Your library is not listed in the Retrospect supported devices database, neither under Grau nor under Infinistore:

Retrospect supported devices database

 

It may supposedly "emulate" an Exabyte X200, for some definition of "emulate", but perhaps the emulation is not complete. The Exabyte X200 does show as a supported device:

Retrospect supported devices - Exabyte X200

 

(3) You have not provided any information at all about the tape drives other than that they are AIT-2. Perhaps your drives aren't supported, perhaps their firmware needs updating.

 

I notice that your tape drives aren't even on the same SCSI channel or even on the same SCSI card as the library/autoloader, and that might be causing the problem because Retrospect generally wants the drives and the autoloader/library together.

 

The biggest problem seems to be, if I understand you correctly, that Retrospect doesn't even see a tape if you put it in the tape drive. Retrospect should be able, from your description, to view the drives as separate and apart from the library/autoloader, and until you get that part working, there doesn't seem to be much hope to go further.

 

You might give Retrospect support a call because your problem is pretty specific, and they might be able to suggest a workaround. Perhaps its something as simple as adjusting LUNs or SCSI IDs.

 

Russ

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Thanks for your answers.

I have made some progress as I gave up trying with retrospect and ran into the same problem with another backup software. The problem is indeed that the drives (which are listed correctly but seperately) are connected to a different SCSI-card. The other backup solution startet working with the tape library when I installed one LVD-drive and connected everything to one SCSI-card.

Didn't try this with retrospect yet, but I will do so next week. I am confident it'll work. Only it means I will have to buy new drives, sadly.

 

Edited by Guest
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I reinstalled retrospect now but nothing changed. Though the library and the drive are connected to one controller, they are listed separately in retrospect. Moving a tape from one slot to another works, but the load-button does nothin...

 

The tapedrive (Sony AIT2 SDX500C or SDX510CL) itself is not the problem here. If I put a tape into the drive manually (by hand...), retrospect works with it.

 

I'll try the newer Version now.

 

Edited by Guest
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