HP StorageWorks TapeAssure service version 1.1 User guide This document provides information about the HP StorageWorks TapeAssure service, which makes it possible to monitor the health and status of your standalone Ultrium tape drives. This guide is intended for storage and system administrators who monitor and manage tape devices.
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Contents 1 Introduction ....................................................................................... 7 Features ..................................................................................................................................... 7 Benefits ..................................................................................................................................... 7 Architecture ...............................................................................................
6 Support and other resources .............................................................. 37 Contacting HP .......................................................................................................................... Subscription service ............................................................................................................ Related information ................................................................................................................... HP websites .
Figures 1 TapeAssure architecture for standalone tape drives ........................................................
Tables 1 Document conventions .............................................................................................
1 Introduction This guide provides information about the TapeAssure service monitoring software. The TapeAssure service makes previously unavailable information about the health and use of standalone HP Ultrium tape drives available through the HP TapeAssure dashboard in Command View for Tape Libraries (Command View TL). Features HP StorageWorks TapeAssure service collects operational data for the standalone tape drives and tapes being monitored.
• Justify capacity increases with real data about usage. • Maintain equipment with minimum disruption by: • Knowing the remaining expected life of drives and tapes, and planning ahead for possible maintenance and replacement. • Finding out the health of drives and tapes, and about issues before hard failures occur. • Receiving proactive advice on corrective actions. • Finding out about the quality of backup data and its viability for long term storage.
• Mid range libraries – MSL – The library controller pulls the support ticket (out of band) and sends it to Command View TL for analysis and presentation. Note that the MSL 5000/6000 libraries are not supported by TapeAssure in this release. • Enterprise libraries – EML and ESL-e – The support ticket is pulled (out of band) from within the library by the Interface Manager card and sent to Command View TL for analysis and presentation.
This is similar to the single drive configuration. The TapeAssure service monitors all the drives on the server. • Multiple servers, multiple tape drives This is a common configuration for larger businesses and often applies to businesses with multiple sites. In this case the TapeAssure service should still be installed on each of the backup servers, but Command View TL should be installed on a server best placed for centralized monitoring. This can be anywhere on the intranet.
2 Installation and configuration Using TapeAssure with standalone tape drives requires installation of two components — the TapeAssure service and Command View TL. • The TapeAssure service pulls support tickets and sends them to the Command View TL database. • Command View TL, which holds the database, performs the analysis and displays the results. Downloading, installing, and starting the TapeAssure service The ticket pulling functionality is provided by the TapeAssure service.
NOTE: If Command View TL is not operating, the support tickets will be stored on the server, ready to be sent to Command View TL when it is available. Setting service configurations You can set up and control the behavior of the TapeAssure service by changing parameter values in the configuration file \config\sta_service.cfg in the installation directory. NOTE: In most cases, it is only necessary to specify the Command View TL management station IP address. You can leave the other values in their default.
Parameters The following is the full list of parameters that you can set to control HP TapeAssure functions: • TICKET_STORING_LOCATION The location where the drive tickets will be stored before being sent to the management station. Defaults to the logs\tktstorage folder in the TapeAssure service software installation directory. Changes to this parameter are dynamic and will take effect immediately. • ELTT_INITALIZATION_LOCATION The location for eLTT (embedded LTT) working files.
• RETAIN_RECENT_TICKETS Controls whether the recent ticket for each drive is retained or not. Valid values are: • 1 — retains the recent ticket for each drive (default behavior) • 0 — does not retain the recent ticket for each drive If an invalid value is configured, the previously configured valid value will be used.
3. Click on the Command View TL TapeAssure Drives Health tab and verify that the drive serial number appears in the list. If the backup application does not unload the tape at the end of the backup, you may need to wait until the first timed ticket is pulled. This could be up to six hours, depending on the POLLING_INTERVAL specified in the TapeAssure service configuration. Another option is to check for the initial tape drive ticket entry in a Command View TL das_0.log lo file: 1.
To verify that a drive is being monitored, follow the process for Verifying the installation, page 14 or follow the more detailed troubleshooting processes in Chapter 4, page 25. About using Command View TL with the TapeAssure service Command View TL is a web-based application that usually runs on a separate server than the backup server. Your organization might already have an installation of Command View TL for existing HP EML or ESL-e libraries.
TapeAssure overview The first item displayed in the TapeAssure tab is the TapeAssure Overview. This overview lists the systems monitored by HP TapeAssure. If there is data about standalone tape drives in the database, then this is also referenced. Library and serial number information The TapeAssure data contains references to library names or serial numbers. For standalone tape drives, this column indicates the name of the server to which the standalone drives are connected.
in addition to an unload command from the backup application. You can change this configuration if you prefer to have a different interval. A manual unload of the tape does not trigger a ticket pull because the TapeAssure service cannot detect it. It can only monitor commands sent to the drive. A manual unload and load will record a new load count in the drive, so TapeAssure will add a new database entry for the next ticket pulled.
3 Using TapeAssure Conducting a health assessment of drives and tapes Unless L&TT has been used regularly, this may be the first health assessment that has been performed on the tape drive, which might trigger warnings and indicate service actions. NOTE: You should be prepared to address possible warnings and/or service actions, such as clean drive or retire tape the first time you use HP TapeAssure. Following the first backup, Command View TL will display TapeAssure health data for the drive and tape.
2. Select Drives > Health from the navigation pane. HP TapeAssure displays a summary of all drive health information in the right hand pane. The types of drive health information displayed in the TapeAssure tab are: • Write quality — displays how well the drive writes data to the tape. Note that data is always written at high quality (unless the drive returns an error), but it may take more tape to do so if there is an error rate problem.
3. To view tape health data from the TapeAssure tab, select Tapes > Health from the navigation pane. The types of drive health information displayed in the TapeAssure tab are: • Read/write life remaining — the expected read/write life remaining of the tape, shown as a percentage of the expected life, assuming HP recommended environmental conditions and usage. This is based on the amount of tape that has passed over the drive heads, and compared with HP recommended tape usage limits.
NOTE: You can obtain additional help by hovering your mouse cursor over the appropriate field and/or clicking on Help. Conducting a performance assessment of drives Conducting a performance assessment of tape drive is important because: • HP’s Ultrium tape drives are extremely fast, and if you utilize them at the fastest transfer rates, backup windows will be shorter, making better use of the equipment. • If the drives are not kept streaming, drive life may be limited by reposition life.
5. You can also use the data to see what compression ratios are being achieved. This is not something that can normally be changed, but it is useful to know how well the user data is actually compressing. This information is not usually available, yet has a significant impact on how much data can be written to a tape and the potential host data rates that can be accommodated.
Conducting a utilization assessment for tapes Tape utilization is an assessment of the efficiency of tape use. 1. To view tape utilization data from the TapeAssure tab, select Tapes > Utilization from the navigation pane. Utilization is shown under the column: Capacity used (at last sample) along with two other measures: Data Write and Data Read (in sample time). 2.
4 Troubleshooting the TapeAssure service The TapeAssure service requires the following processes to be working: • • • • • Drive discovery Ticket pulling via the filter driver Sending tickets to Command View TL Receiving, accepting, and processing tickets into the Command View TL database Presenting the TapeAssure data via the Command View TL GUI The following checks guide you through a full verification of these processes, enabling you to diagnose issues.
Check the filter driver installation 1. Verify that the filter driver system file, hptapefltr.sys, is listed in the Windows driver directory: C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\hptapefltr.
2. Use Windows Device Manager to verify that the filter driver is listed for each drive being monitored. Right click the drive that you want to check to display the properties of that drive. Click the Driver tab to display the Driver properties. Click the Driver Details button to display the location of the driver files.
Check that the TapeAssure service is running Use the Windows Computer Management application to verify that the HP StorageWorks TapeAssure Service is running. The TapeAssure service should be configured to start automatically. NOTE: If the service is not shown at all re-install TapeAssure and reboot the server.
Open Windows Task Manager to check that the process hp_taserv.exe is running. If not then it can be launched by starting or restarting the service as shown above. Verify TapeAssure drive discovery This procedure will allow you to check log files to verify that TapeAssure has discovered the drives in your system.
1. When TapeAssure discovers drives, it creates a folder for each drive in the logs\tktstorage folder under the installation folder. Navigate to the \logs\tkstorage folder to check that a folder exists for each drive serial number. 2. If a drive is not listed, but the TapeAssure service is running (which you previously checked), use Windows Device Manager to check that Windows has discovered the drives. 3.
For a full description, see Setting service configurations, page 12. When diagnosing TapeAssure issues, the key configuration parameters to check are: • MANAGEMENT_STATION_IP – verify that this is the IP address of the Command View TL management station • MANAGEMENT_STATION_PORT – verify that this is the port number of the Command View TL management station. Most likely this will be 8099 unless the port number has been changed using Command View TL.
In this example too much disk space has been consumed by tickets and/or log files compared with that allocated in the configuration file. If tickets are not sent successfully, they remain in the logs/tktstorage folder for their respective drive. Once the issue is resolved (such as the correct IP address and port are configured for the management station) then any tickets in these folders will be re-sent to Command View TL.
Check the Command View TL Device Analysis Service log for received tickets As tickets are received by Command View TL, entries are made in the das_[0..9].log (Device Analysis Service) file which is found in the log folder in the Command View TL install directory: C:\Program Files\Hewlett-Packard\Command View TL\log There can be multiple log files starting with das_0.log and working up to das_9.log.
Tickets in this directory are not transient so it is good practice to check this folder occasionally to see if there are any new tickets which may indicate issues in the ticket processing process that should be followed up by going back through the checks above.
5 Frequently asked questions Q: How do I get HP TapeAssure? A: All application downloads and documentation are available from the TapeAssure website at www.hp.com/go/tapeassure. Q: What are the minimum system requirements? A: Any server that fulfills the needs of the supported configurations detailed in Supported configurations, page 9. Loading on the server for either the TapeAssure service or Command View TL is fairly minimal. Q: Does HP TapeAssure support non-HP devices? A: No.
Q: Can I set up TapeAssure to email me the service actions? A: Yes. This is done from the Command View TL GUI. Please see the HP StorageWorks Interface Manager and Command View TL user guide for details. Q: What if I want to change my Command View TL server? A: The Command View TL server is set up as a configuration for the TapeAssure service. If the URL of the server is changed in the configuration then the TapeAssure data will be sent to the new location.
6 Support and other resources Contacting HP For worldwide technical support information, see the HP support website: http://www.hp.
Typographic conventions Table 1 Document conventions Convention Element Blue text: Table 1 Cross-reference links and e-mail addresses Blue, underlined text: http://www.hp.
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