HP StorageWorks MSL6000 series tape library user guide (231910-009, February 2008)

Troubleshooting140
Using Diagnostic Support Tools
This section describes diagnostic tools available to help troubleshoot and maintain your tape library.
Library Performance
HP-UX host responds slowly, or crashes
after connecting to the library.
• Check the SCSI IDs of all devices on the host busses
to ensure there are no conflicts.
• Check that the application software does not require
SCSI IDs to be in a certain order.
• Contact your authorized service provider.
The library is not efficiently backing up
data.
• Check the network bandwidth from the target to the
host computer.
• Check that the library’s drives are on their own SCSI
bus, and not daisy-chained to another tape drive,
hard drive, or other high bandwidth device.
• Check that the server and file system have the
processing power and memory needed to stream the
tape drive.
• Ensure that other applications are not taking up
bandwidth from the backup server or target
workstations.
• Ensure the server has a fast enough file system (i.e.
RAID).
• Ensure that the drive is clean.
• Try a new tape. A marginal tape can cause
performance problems due to bad spots on the tape,
requiring retries.
• Ensure that the application software is using
fixed-length records (or blocks) to maximize
throughput, and has not defaulted to a smaller
record size. (64K should be sufficient.)
• Ensure that the data is being compressed, however
do not turn on both software and hardware
compression. (In most cases, hardware compression
should be enabled.)
• Check the size of the files. Backing up several small
files can impact performance.
Table 11 Troubleshooting General Problems (continued)
Problem Solution