NDMP Tape Drive Issue

[virginnetapps]

Hi All,

I have zoned two optical tape drive with the HBA pf the filer and these tape drives were visible on filer as nrst0a & nrst1a which was perfectly fine.

I removed zoning of both the above drives from filer HBA and both nrst0a & nrst1a was not visbile on the filer after removing zoning.

After that i zoned one more optical drive with filers HBA and then the tape drive path on filer was shown as nrst2a. It should be shown as nrst0a.

Could anybody please help.

I would appreciate any advise.

[aborzenkov]

Use “storage unalias” to remove aliases for no more existing tapes and “storage alias” to name your new tape. Or zone tape off, remove all aliases and zone it again in.

NetApp remembers aliases for tapes even if tape is no more visible. Removing them automatically would be fatal actually.

[virginnetapps]

Thanks for the advise.

The command "storage unalias -t" will remove all tape drive aliases. I hope after i again zone a tape drive filer will recognize it as nrst0a. Please advise if you think otherwise.

Can we remove a particular tape drive alias?

Also, request you to please elaborate on "Removing them automatically would be fatal actually."

[aborzenkov]

Yes, you can remove particular tape alias: storage unalias { alias | -a | -m | -t }

After all aliases are removed the first tape found will get st0.

Tape aliases are used in backup management systems (e.g. when NetWorker auto-configures NDMP storage node, it will populate device names with tape aliases). If aliases were removed as soon device disappeared and recreated again, device could be renumbered (i.e. the same alias assigned to the different physical device) which would play havoc with tape management. And losing devices in SAN is not that uncommon (misconfiguration, accidental cable pull, power loss, library reboot – pick your favorite).