Block size woes after upgrade to 2012 r2

[JimmyJamJoJo]

Support case - 02124595

Hi Guys,
I'm pretty sure I know the answer here, but just wondering if anyone else has been in this situation... Up until a couple of months ago, we were hosting Veeam on our backup server, on a bare metal server 2008. We had a NAS connected via iSCSI for a repository, and a tape drive/autoloader (HP LTO-4 and 1/8 Autoloader) connected via ultra 320 SCSI.

We upgraded our servers and storage, which left us with the old hosts.

We installed 2012 r2 on one of the old hosts, installed Veeam, and imported our config. All went well. We then moved the hardware - Again, all went well.

However, we have found that veeam cannot read the tapes written before the move, but we can write new tapes and read any tapes written after the move. After some back and forth with support, the problem is apparently block size. On 2012r2, it seems the only block size available to us is 65536 (despite the driver info window saying max = 16777215, min = 2, default = 65536). Veeam logs suggest it's detecting a block size of 131072 on the tapes but is then unable to set that block size.

Same goes for HP Library and tape tools. The read/write test completes fine on a 64kb block size but errors out on anything different. We need 2012r2 to take advantage of de-duplication, but from what i've read, older SCSI interfaces aren't really supported on 2012r2, opting more for iSCSI/SAS interfaces.

Has anyone else been in this situation? Is my only option to buy a newer tape drive/autoloader?

[BartP]

A Similar problem has occurred in the past.
While the problem is not the same, the situation is alike and is fixable.

I hope the answer is of use.

[JimmyJamJoJo]

A Similar problem has occurred in the past.
While the problem is not the same, the situation is alike and is fixable.

I hope the answer is of use.

Thanks, Looks like they found the answer in the latest drivers. I have everything on the latest drivers/firmware and being an old LTO-4 SCSI system i doubt i'll see any newer...

If i'm reading right, removing the offending tape from the library might do it? Force it to re-inventory the tape as though it was written elsewhere and never seen it... I'll try that today.

The registry key looks like it might be on the right lines too...