9 diagnostic tools and performance, Main features available with library & tape tools – HP StoreEver Ultrium Tape Drives User Manual
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9 Diagnostic Tools and Performance
In this chapter:
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HP Library & Tape Tools (page 44)
•
•
Performance Assessment Tools (page 45)
HP Library & Tape Tools with integrated TapeAssure monitoring
HP LTO Library & Tape Tools is the recommended diagnostic and support tool for your HP tape
storage product. It is available from a link on the CD shipped with your product or as a free
download from the HP web site (link below) and is supported on all major operating systems.
HP L&TT version 5.0 onwards offers integrated TapeAssure monitoring for Windows users so it is
strongly recommended that you pre-install L&TT when you first install your tape drive and use it to
monitor your drive from the very first backup. You can also find out your backup performance and
drive and tape utilization using TapeAssure.
TIP:
Should you need to contact HP Support at any time, the support engineer will ask that you
update the drive’s firmware and run diagnostics using L&TT. It is not always convenient to install
L&TT at the time of a support call and it is important that you are able to update firmware and run
diagnostics when asked. Pre-installing L&TT will speed up the call significantly. It is also very useful
to the support engineer, if there is a lifetime of monitoring data available.
Non-Windows users will need to use the latest 4.x version until 5.x supports their operating system.
Look out for updates from the website for that. Even though 4.x versions do not include TapeAssure
monitoring it is still a good idea to have L&TT pre-installed on your server should you need to
contact HP Support.
L&TT is available as a free download from
Main features available with Library & Tape Tools
Once you have installed L&TT you will be able to choose from the following features:
•
Device identification: shows part number, serial number and information about any cartridge
loaded.
•
Firmware upgrade: allows you to locate and upgrade to the latest firmware. You will need to
be connected to the internet for this.
•
Run tests: allows you to run proactive tests on your drive, such as the drive assessment test,
which will verify the functionality of your drive in around 20 minutes. HP recommends running
this test before calling HP Support. You will need to provide a ‘trusted' cartridge that can be
written to during this test.
•
Generate a support ticket: this is a full dump of the drive logs along with interpretation and
is used by HP Support to learn about the condition of your drive. Most useful is the device
analysis section which is the output from approximately 140 rules forming a comprehensive
analysis of the health of your drive. These rules may give advice such as cleaning the drive
or trying a different tape if issues are found. The support ticket can be sent to HP Support for
further analysis.
•
Run the performance tests: these tests allow you to verify the performance of your tape drive
and measure the data rate of your source data independent of the backup application. They
are extremely useful for finding the bottleneck in your system if you are not getting the expected
backup (or restore) performance.
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Diagnostic Tools and Performance