Skip to main content

Hi,

Does anyone know what sense codes CVLT interprets to start a drive cleaning job?

We suspect that CVLT is starting tape drive cleanup jobs under unexpected and undesired conditions.

The option “Set drive as needs on CRC errors” is not checked. In two days we got one new cleaning universal tape that expired. There's another one on the way. A new cleaning tape has 50 cycles. 

We have a Qualstar model RLS-87120 LTO6 with 5 drives. 

 

There is no automatic/schedule cleaning at the Library side. There is drive cleaning schedule on CVLT. 

We would greatly appreciate it if someone could contact the developers and find out this information.

 

 

The Tape Library supports a specific sense code to inform a system that its drives needs cleaning. 

The tape library and drive need to be in a specific firmware version to guarentee proper functioning.
This is kind of an old one looking at the tape storage matrix:

https://documentation.commvault.com/tapestoragematrix/?facet.vendor=%22Qualstar%22&facet.model=%22RLS%20Series%22

Not that this is a bad thing, but the older hardware gets and the more evolved software gets, they might not work well together anymore in the long run.

Can you confirm you are running the proper firmware and OS which are supported on Commvault?

If this is not the case I would advise you to disable sense codes and use “cleaning thresholds exceed” this way you rely on cleaning being triggered by a counter and not the library/drive.

Documentation on cleaning thresholds:

https://documentation.commvault.com/11.24/expert/11027_hardware_maintenance_configuration.html#drive-cleaning-threshold-parameters