HP Linear Tape File System Software User Manual

HP StorageWorks TapeAssure LTFS Service Version 1.0 User Guide

This document provides information about the HP StorageWorks TapeAssure LTFS 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 in HP LTFS installations.

Part Number: EH957-90937 Second edition: August 2011

Legal and notice information

Confidential computer software. Valid license from HP required for possession, use or copying. Consistent with FAR 12.211 and 12.212, Commercial Computer Software, Computer Software Documentation, and Technical Data for Commercial Items are licensed to the U.S. Government under vendor's standard commercial license.

The information contained herein is subject to change without notice. The only warranties for HP products and services are set forth in the express warranty statements accompanying such products and services. Nothing herein should be construed as constituting an additional warranty. HP shall not be liable for technical or editorial errors or omissions contained herein.

http://www.hp.com/go/storagewarranty

Intel, Itanium, Pentium, Intel Inside, and the Intel Inside logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Intel Corporation or its subsidiaries in the United States and other countries.

Microsoft, Windows, Windows XP, and Windows NT are U.S. registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation.

TapeAssure. is a registered US trademark of Hewlett Packard Corp.

UNIX is a registered trademark of The Open Group.

Contents

1 Introduction ....................................................................................... 7

Features ..................................................................................................................................... 7

Benefits ..................................................................................................................................... 7

Architecture ................................................................................................................................ 8

Supported configurations ............................................................................................................. 9

Typical configurations .................................................................................................................. 9

Comparing TapeAssure and L&TT ............................................................................................... 10

2 Installation and configuration ............................................................. 11

Downloading, installing, and starting the TapeAssure LTFS service ................................................... 11

Downloading and installing Command View TL ........................................................................... 13

Reporting errors and logs .......................................................................................................... 13

Verifying the installation ............................................................................................................. 13

About using Command View TL with the TapeAssure service ........................................................... 15

About the Command View TL Library Selection screen ................................................................... 15

TapeAssure overview ................................................................................................................. 15

Library and serial number information ......................................................................................... 16

About the operation of the TapeAssure LTFS service ....................................................................... 16

3 Using TapeAssure ........................................................................... 19

Conducting a health assessment of drives and tapes ...................................................................... 19

Conducting a performance assessment of drives ........................................................................... 22

Conducting a utilization assessment for drives ............................................................................... 23

Conducting a utilization assessment for tapes ............................................................................... 24

Conducting a utilization assessment ........................................................................................... 24

About email alerts .................................................................................................................... 24

4 Uninstalling the TapeAssure LTFS service ............................................. 25

5 Troubleshooting the TapeAssure LTFS service ........................................ 27

Check compatibility ................................................................................................................. 27

Check that HP LTFS is installed and running .................................................................................. 27

Check that the TapeAssure LTFS service is running ......................................................................... 27

Check the configuration ............................................................................................................. 28

Check the TapeAssure LTFS service log for sent tickets .................................................................... 28

Check that the TapeAssure service is running ................................................................................ 28

Check the TapeAssure LTFS service configuration ........................................................................... 28

Check the TapeAssure LTFS service log for sent tickets .................................................................... 29

Check the Command View TL Device Analysis Service log for received tickets ................................... 29

Check the Command View TL Device Analysis log for rejected tickets ............................................... 29

6 About the Sa_TapeAssure utility ......................................................... 31

HP StorageWorks TapeAssure LTFS Service Version 1.0 User Guide 3

7 Support and other resources .............................................................. 33

Contacting HP .......................................................................................................................... 33

Subscription service ............................................................................................................ 33

Related information ................................................................................................................... 33

HP websites ....................................................................................................................... 33

Typographic conventions ........................................................................................................... 34

HP product documentation survey ............................................................................................... 35

Figures

TapeAssure architecture for standalone tape drives ........................................................ 81

HP StorageWorks TapeAssure LTFS Service Version 1.0 User Guide 5

Tables

Document conventions ............................................................................................. 341

1 Introduction

This guide provides information about the TapeAssure service monitoring software for LTFS installations. 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. The data is sent to and stored in the Command View TL database and can be viewed using the Command View TL GUI through a health, performance, and utilization dashboard that includes the following components:

• Drive Health — write/read quality levels, key drive life indicators, and any service actions.

• Drive Performance — host and media transfer rates and compression ratios.

• Drive Utilization – the time the drive is in use as a percentage.

• Tape Health – effective capacity, key tape life indicators and any service actions. Effective capacity

• Tape Utilization – write and read data volumes and capacity used.

Detailed information about each specific drive and tape is available from its properties page, which is accessed by double-clicking the appropriate row on the dashboard.

Benefits

The information provided by HP TapeAssure enables you to:

• Make the best use of your equipment, including the ability to:

is a key measure of the health of the drive and tape combination. The data is always written at high quality, but using more tape to write the data if there are write issues, making effective capacity a better measure of tape health than raw error rate.

• Know the usage levels of each drive and whether the drives are kept streaming

• Know which tapes are being used and how much capacity remains

• Measure performance and utilization so you can tune the configuration of your systems to

make best use of your investment

HP StorageWorks TapeAssure LTFS Service Version 1.0 User Guide 7

• Reduce total cost of ownership (TCO) through better utilization and reduced need for unused

Standalone TapeAssure with LTFS

Backup Server

TapeAssure LTFS Service

Management Station

CVTL TapeAssure

Ticket data flow

Browser

Ticket

store

HP LTFS

driver

HBA driver

SCSI driver

Application

Ticket

Transport

Ticket

store

Ticket

Transport

TapeAssure

Embedded

LTT Ticket

Parsing

Data

Processing &

Presentation

Application data flow

capacity

• 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. Receive

timely warnings and take pre-emptive action for any real issues.

• Reduce total cost of ownership through reduced downtime and disruption

Although these are normally considered enterprise features, they apply equally to all applications of tape based backup and are therefore available with all HP LTO-based devices, from standalone drives to enterprise class libraries.

Architecture

TapeAssure incorporates HP’s industry-leading diagnostic tool, L&TT, into the data collection solution. The LTFS driver pulls an L&TT support ticket from the drive whenever a cartridge is unmounted and uses the TapeAssure LTFS service to send it to CommandView TL. Within Command View TL another form of L&TT runs a full diagnostic analysis on the tape drive, tape, and data.

Figure 1 TapeAssure architecture for standalone tape drives

Introduction8

The TapeAssure service for LTFS runs as a deamon process, which can be started and stopped using the TapeAssure LTFS service management tool provided with the package.

Supported configurations

The TapeAssure service supports:

• The same LTO tape devices and host bus adaptors (HBAs) supported by HP LTFS

• Operating systems:

• Redhat 5 Linux 32

• Redhat 5 Linux 64

• Redhat 6.0 Linux 32

• Redhat 6.0 Linux 64

• SuSE ES11 Linux 32

• SuSE ES11 Linux 64

• MAC OS x 10.5

• MAC OS x 10.6

• Supporting applications

• HP LTFS Standalone 1.2 or later

• Command View TL version 2.6 or later

NOTE:

Command View TL is only supported on Windows, requiring a mixed installation of Linux/MAC and Windows servers for TapeAssure support. The Windows server can be any server accessible via the LAN from the server running HP LTFS (firewalls permitting).

Typical configurations

TapeAssure is very flexible in the configurations it can support. HP recommends using a single Command View TL management station to consolidate the data.

HP TapeAssure supports the following configurations:

• Single server, single tape drive

This is a very common configuration. In this case, the TapeAssure service should be installed on the server. Command View TL can be installed anywhere that the TapeAssure service can access across your company intranet - including the backup server itself.

• Single server, multiple tape drives

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. This is an ideal use for TapeAssure where backups are automated in many locations and monitored from a central location.

HP StorageWorks TapeAssure LTFS Service Version 1.0 User Guide 9

Comparing TapeAssure and L&TT

The two tools work together to provide a full monitoring and diagnostic solution, and are fully compatible and consistent. For example, a support ticket pulled as part of monitoring activity can be opened and viewed using L&TT, allowing you to see all support ticket information. TapeAssure focuses on the key pieces of data in a support ticket and is therefore a subset of the complete L&TT functionality.

The two tools are complementary and are focused on different use models:

• TapeAssure is a monitoring solution.

It is part of the configuration and always on. All analysis is passive, based on the rich detail in each support ticket, which is automatically pulled at the end of each backup. Analysis results reflect the real life use of the system. There are no active tests carried out in a test environment, so if potentially serious issues are identified, TapeAssure will recommend the use of L&TT to run the Drive Assessment test.

• L&TT is a standalone application that runs on the backup server.

The tool is usually run after encountering an issue or if you want to check the health of your system. It offers three main capabilities, as well as other utilities:

• Firmware update

• Support ticket acquisition and analysis – as per TapeAssure

• Active tests – the most important of which is the Drive Assessment test.

Introduction10

2 Installation and configuration

NOTE:

These instructions assume that HP LTFS is already installed on the server. For instructions on installing HP LTFS see the HP LTFS user guide available at http://www.hp.com/go/ltfs.

Using TapeAssure with drives connected to a computer running a Linux or Mac operating system and managed by HP LTFS requires installation of two components — the TapeAssure LTFS service and Command View TL.

• Command View TL receives, stores, and analyzes the tickets, and then displays the results through

its browser-based user interface.

Downloading, installing, and starting the TapeAssure LTFS service

NOTE:

You must be logged in as root to install the TapeAssure LTFS service.

To download, install, and start the TapeAssure LTFS service:

1. Download the TapeAssure LTFS service from www.hp.com/go/tapeassure.

a. Navigate to the correct download for the required operating system.

b. Download the install package.

2. Extract the installation file from the Sa_TapeAssure_Package tar file package. For example,

tar -xvf <Package tar file name> <Destination directory>

3. Change directory to the directory of the extracted files. For example:

cd /usr/local/satapeassure_install

HP StorageWorks TapeAssure LTFS Service Version 1.0 User Guide 11

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