broadcast Posted December 5, 2006 Report Share Posted December 5, 2006 Hi, We tried to add an AIT-5 tape drive to our Qualstar library today and found some problems. Retrospect sees both Library and the new tape drive but as soon as we inserted AIT-5 media (or AIT-3 media) we got "not responding" then, retrospect hangs for few minutes and gives "error communicating" massage. I know that AIT-5 tape and Qualstar TLS 4480 are supported by retrospect (separately). Anyone have any experience with this setup? G4 1GHZMP/1.25G ram Tiger 10.4.6 Atto UL3D Qualstar TLS-4480 Retrospect server 6.1 Driver update 6.1.9.102 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rhwalker Posted December 5, 2006 Report Share Posted December 5, 2006 What Firmware version do you have on the UL3D? Current version is 7/15/03 (v1.6.6f0) What Driver version do you have for the UL3D? Current version is v3.21. What Retrospect version do you have? (6.1.what) Do you have any other devices on the same UL3D channel as the AIT-5 and Qualstar library? We don't have your configuration (we have Xserve G5 with ATTO UL4D), but we did have issues when there were disks on the same channel as our Exabyte VXA-2 1x10 1u PacketLoader (LVD SCSI VXA-2 with autoloader). Just to ask some stupid questions: Whose AIT-5 drive is it? Have you tried running their diagnostics? Firmware up-to-date? If it's the Sony AIT-5 drive, the diagnostics and firmware are here: Sony AIT-5 Support I assume you've got good LVD cables and terminators, right? That's an awfully fast drive for your G4. Russ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
broadcast Posted December 6, 2006 Author Report Share Posted December 6, 2006 -What Firmware version do you have on the UL3D? Current version is 7/15/03 (v1.6.6f0) Firmware version v1.6.6f0 -What Driver version do you have for the UL3D? Current version is v3.21. Driver version 3.2.1 -What Retrospect version do you have? (6.1.what) 6.1.1.26 -Do you have any other devices on the same UL3D channel as the AIT-5 and Qualstar library? We have AIT-3 drive on the same channel but when we encounter the problem we disconected it and left the AIT-5 tape drive and the problem was the same. -Whose AIT-5 drive is it? Have you tried running their diagnostics? Firmware up-to-date? Its Qualstars AIT-5 (Sony SDX-1100) drive and I had Qualstar technician update the library firmware to the latest one from Qualstar -If it's the Sony AIT-5 drive, the diagnostics and firmware are here: Qualstar technician did check the drive before installing it in our library and confirmed it passed all tests. -I assume you've got good LVD cables and terminators, right? Correct, this is a working setup before the AIT-5 and the AIT-5 replaced the AIT-3 tape drive that was in the library. Thanks for trying to help. Regards, Neil Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rhwalker Posted December 6, 2006 Report Share Posted December 6, 2006 Neil, Then I'm baffled. The error indicates that there is a problem somewhere between the UL3D and everything beyond, in that Retrospect is having difficulty communicating with the AIT-5. I note that the AIT-5 is a very new product, just introduced within the last month or two. It's possible that there's some wierdness in the new firmware. I checked, and I agree that the SDX-1100 is listed as a "qualified" (supported) device. Only suggestion I can make is that, because this is such a fast drive and you have a rather underpowered computer for it (2 x 1 GHz G4) with a rather small amount of RAM (1.25 GB), it might be a timing problem with the ATTO UL3D. You might try using the ATTO config utility to throttle the speed down, see if that has an affect. The Retrospect tech support people would be a good resource on this, I've seen them suggest this to others. You might give them a call. But other than that, you seem to be doing everything right. All indications point to the AIT-5 drive because that seems to be the only thing that changed. Russ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
broadcast Posted December 6, 2006 Author Report Share Posted December 6, 2006 I will have Qualstar technician try to isolate the problem by connecting the AIT-5 tape alone and bypassing the Qualstar library. I'll also give the ATTO config tool a try and post the results. Thanks again, Neil. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
broadcast Posted December 7, 2006 Author Report Share Posted December 7, 2006 We had the AIT-5 tape connected directly and here are the results: In Retrospect we didnt have errors but the speed was very slow only 3-4 MB/sec. We then tried sony command line tool and got the same poor speed, here is the log: *********** Sprobe ver. 1.0 for Mac OS X, Sony Electronics 2003 *********** dev0 appeared. *********** INQUIRY DATA *********** Peripheral Device Type = 1 Vendor Identification = SONY Product Identification = SDX-1100 Product Revision Level = 0100 tpol:~/Desktop/sonytape_mac_os10_v1.9 archive$ sudo ./sonytape dev0 -w datap.binSonytape ver. 1.8 for Mac OS X, Sony Electronics, Inc. 2005 Vendor Id = SONY Product Id = SDX-1100 Revision Level = 0100 Checking tape drive write and read function. Warning!! This process will write over data and takes several minutes. Test Unit Ready Unit Attention, Power on, reset or bus device reset occurred Test Unit Ready Unit Attention, Not ready to ready transition, medium may have changed Erase Short erase process is now complete. Mode Select Rewind Data compression disabled. 1,638 MBytes of data was written in 336 seconds. Write transfer rate = 4.88 MBytes/sec Rewind 1,638 MBytes of data was read in 419 seconds. Read transfer rate = 3.91 MBytes/sec Mode Select Test Unit Ready Rewind Data compression enabled. 1,638 MBytes of data was written in 340 seconds. Write transfer rate = 4.82 MBytes/sec Rewind 1,638 MBytes of data was read in 450 seconds. Read transfer rate = 3.64 MBytes/sec Log Sense Rewind Done. So it seems like the problem is not Retrospect driver and more like the UL3D HBA or the G4 (as you suggested), I emailed ATTO to see if they can resolve this I couldn't find were in ATTO config utility to throttle the speed down. Regards, Neil. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rhwalker Posted December 7, 2006 Report Share Posted December 7, 2006 Quote: I couldn't find were in ATTO config utility to throttle the speed down. I've never had to do it myself on our ATTO UL4D in our Xserve G5, but I've seen that suggestion before from the Retrospect support people in these forums. You might give them a call. In version 3.07 of the ATTO config tool (the one I have, which is, I believe, the current version), for the UL4D (which is what I have), if you expand the triangles for localhost and for the HBA (ExpressPCI UL4D), you see icons for each channel (Channel 1, Channel 2). If you click on those icons you get a window with NVRAM parameters that can be set (Sync Rate, Fallback Sync Rate, etc.). I don't have a clue how they should be changed; I suggest you call ATTO and/or Retrospect support. Ours are at the defaults and have never been changed. The one time I had to call ATTO support about a question (not a problem) with our UL4D I was very impressed with the knowledge of their support people (as I have been with the Retrospect support group, too). Definitely not Bob from Bangalore. Russ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
broadcast Posted December 7, 2006 Author Report Share Posted December 7, 2006 ATTO had some NVRAM setting for slowing down the HBA but it turned out my UL3D is an OEM from Apple and doesn't have the option of NVRAM configuration... The AIT-5 tape is too new so they don't have one to test yet. Neil. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
broadcast Posted December 24, 2006 Author Report Share Posted December 24, 2006 I got a UL4D card and all is well (so far) with the AIT-5. So, there seems to be an issue between AIT-5 tape drive and UL3D with default NVRAM settings. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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