Unknown media (possibly in use by another application)

[rm4g00]

Im slowly loosing the will with Veeam..

-New backup server- catalog tape from prior month to restore a job - i reieve the following error for an unrecongized tape with confirmed data Unknown media (possibly in use by another application)

Does anyone know of a way of getting this data>? latest veeam version .823 -2012r2 HP 1/8 G2 autoloader

thanks

[veremin]

Are you positive that tape was written by Veeam? If so, what product version did you use then and what product version do you use now?

[rm4g00]

Positive, last months backup tape job- the only difference is the server has been upgraded to 2012r2 and veeam upgraded to the latest version.

[veremin]

Then, please, reach our support team for further investigation, described situation does not look expected.

[rm4g00]

I've opened a ticket- I've now tried a tape from last year & the same error... not good.

[veremin]

Yep, the reported issue seems strange, so support assistance is definitely required here. We'd also appreciate, if you provide us with a support ticket number, once it's opened.

[rm4g00]

Support hasnt found anything yet... does anyone have any solution?

[veremin]

Can you tell us your ticket number so that we can investigate it internally?

[StephanG]

I also had this problem. Support said. We cannot do anything. Tape failed and must be formatted.

Almost every backup set (we backup every month) has at least one tape that cannot be recognized.
Case No. was 02051173

[veremin]

Unfortunately, the case is not in English, so we cannot make sense of it. But I can see that at some point tapes were erased manually, did a support engineer instruct you to do so or was it your own initiative?

[rm4g00]

Yup pretty useless- this is a veeam issue literally knowone can solve as of yet- tapes are useless unless my backup server is the exact same settings as the one that conducted the read/write - same block size.

Veeam support havent really been useful with this one and referred me to my tape drive manufacturer- whom I dont have a support contract with.. meanwhile the users in my company have nothing...

[veremin]

As mentioned above, what is your support ticket number? It's needed in order for us to investigate the issue internally and see whether you ran into expected behavior or not. Thanks.

[amertens]

Cannot use tape Tape 1: unknown media (possibly in use by another application)
I have the same problem. tried a lot of tapes all used with veeam.
We lost our server in case of a fire that destroyed al our servers.
I have a new server and installed veeam 9,5 software.
We rent a msl2024 tape loader and i get the same message as above. with al of the tapes. I have more then 20 tapes used with early versions of veeam.
Soo please help with restoring my data

[stuartmacgreen]

Same error here.
Case # 02308785

Error Cannot inventory tape in Drive 1 (Server: barney.bedrock.org, Library: HP MSL6480 5.10, Drive ID: Tape2). Unknown media (possibly in use by another application)

My environment/scenario is the following.

I have 1 x Veeam Backup Server, 3 x Veeam Tape Servers.
Each Tape Server has its own attached tape library.
For simplicity I have created 1 Media Pool for each tape library. Note: None of the media pools have multiple libraries.
Each of these tape libraries/servers is in different datacenters in different countries.
I have a vsphere cluster running in each of these locations and backup the vms locally to the local veeam tape server.
If one datacenter has a disaster I would get my tapes shipped from the offsite vault at that disaster location to one of my other datacenters to restore the vms into that vsphere cluster.

I have tested this and fails.

I have LTO-6 in Location A, and LTO-5 in location B and C
I have shipped backup tapes from B to A to test a DR restore of VM from tape.

The tapes in question are known in Veeam as Offline against there source Media Pool.
I receive the tapes at location A and import them.
The tapes go into the Unrecognized Media Pool.
So I attempt to catalog them.
I get the above error message. Cannot inventory.
I dig into the logs, and find at the import phase the statement "Duplicate barcodes."

This statement is obvious as now Veeam has two tapes in its entire database with the same barcodes.

Veeam still has tapes allocated to a media pool that has an assigned tape library.

Surely, I do not delete the tapes from Media Pool for location B.
Then Import them at location A then catalog them.?
They are all managed by the same Veeam Backup Server.

I have tried to go the other way and run the restore from tape, instead of the catalogization.
But the restore wizard wants to restore from tapes, that it has allocated in the tape library for location B.

With regards to other posts above, I have delved into technicalities and am aware i am moving LTO-5 tapes into LTO-6 drives which compatibility is OK.
But found that block sizes are different between tapes used in libraries at location A and B. I dont know what bearing this also has.

[Wintermute]

Same error here.
Case # 02308785

Error Cannot inventory tape in Drive 1 (Server: barney.bedrock.org, Library: HP MSL6480 5.10, Drive ID: Tape2). Unknown media (possibly in use by another application)

Regarding this error, after checking relevant cataloging logs, it appeared one of the libraries wrote data with block size higher, than second library drive was able to read. Case was closed.

[jumarcil]

I had the same exact problem after migrating a r710 to a r420 dell server. I used the same lto7 HH& ibm tape drive in both server yet it wouldn't catalog, inventory any older tape. In my old server I was using a lsi sas HBA 6gbs adapter and in the new server i used the second HBA port on my PERC H830 adapter. I could write to blank tape of format old tape but couldn't restore any old data !!!!

I finally put another LSI sas HBA adapter that i had over from another server in my R420 and now everything works fine, i can read my older tape.

The issue was that my lsi sas adapter gave me multiple choice for block size and was set up at 1024k block size but my Perc H830 gave me only 3 choices and 512k was the biggest block size i could set on my tape unit from within veeam. With the new sas adapter I have all the options up to 1024k.

hope it helps someone as I spent about 8 hours trying to figure out what was wrong.

regards

Jules

[Dima P.]

Hi guys,

Thank you for your input. We are in discussions regarding this issue and most likely update the default block size setting with 256k value (looks like its supported by all devices and has zero impact on performance).