HP MSL6000 manual Using Diagnostic Support Tools, Raid

Table 11 Troubleshooting General Problems (continued)

Problem

Library Performance

Solution

HP-UX host responds slowly, or crashes	• Check the SCSI IDs of all devices on the host busses
after connecting to the library.	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	• Check the network bandwidth from the target to the
data.	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.

Using Diagnostic Support Tools

This section describes diagnostic tools available to help troubleshoot and maintain your tape library.

140 Troubleshooting