Arcserve IT 6.6 + Ham Drivers + Dell server
sando
A customer has been experiencing problems with a Dell Power Edge 4300
NW4.11, 128 MB RAM, 4 Gb HD
He started getting 'Write to tape Errors' halfway through his evening
backup jobs.
His server also handles Gwise 5.5 sp4.
When we looked at his server we noticed two things, he was using DSK
drivers
for his 7870 embedded Adaptec SCSI controller, and secondly he was low
on
resources (CB ~ 57 %)
We first opened a call with Dell, and realized that this customer has
already had
problems with this drive - which had been previously replaced.
We patched the mobo bios, the seagate DDS3 DAT drive bios, and upgraded
relative controller drivers.
We also ensured that HAM + CDM drivers were used (AHA2940.HAM +
NWASPI.CDM)
We patched server to sp8a, and ARCserver IT 6.6 to latest sp
we also reinstalled Arcserve in our attempts to resolve the issue.
We also reshuffled IRQs to sit below IRQ9, because IRQ9 was in use by a
'system peripheral 2'
We were unable determine whether 'system peripheral 2' actually refers
to IRQ2, and couldn't modify this assignment anyway.
Concern over the IRQs was spurned by the server running dead slow in
the morning following attempted evening backups (with HAM drivers)
We also used cron to cleanly unload groupwise modules before loading
Arcserve in the evening
Only the first backup was successful.
Since then the server backups very slowly e.g. 2hrs for SYS volume
instead of 10 minutes.
They have regressed to DSK drivers to backup which doesn't seem to
operate much better
They now get evening abends, with auto rebooting.
currently another host is backing this server up.
We did notice that the server, with HAM drivers was running with 48 %
CBs and 20 mins LRU.
We have obtained that the customer order a 128 MB RAM extension.
Thank you
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Tina Buechner
controller first to get to the tape drive. That is what slows it down
so much. Switch back to HAM drivers and then use the ARCserve board
driver (CANWPABD) with the CLEAR switch. This will make it search for
the board with the tape drive and ignore all other controllers. You
make this change in the asconfig.ini file under the [loader] section.
You will also want to use the USEABOVE16 switch after the board driver
and tapesrv driver. Here is an example from those lines out of my
asconfig.ini file:
CSNLM6=SYS:\ARCSERVE.6\NLM\CANWPABD USEABOVE16 CLEAR
CSNLM10=SYS:\ARCSERVE.6\NLM\TAPESVR USEABOVE16
Good luck.