What can cause incr. tape to stay in drive?

[pkelly_sts]

I have a tape job that targets 4 x Endpoint jobs & 1 x local backup job. It's configured to target full backups to one media set and incremental to another.

I occasionally find the job stalled saying all drives busy but when I look deeper I find that it has processed the Endpoint incrementals but is sitting there with the incremental tape still in the (single) drive saying "All drives busy" & it seems to make no effort to eject the incremental so it can load a full (4 free tapes available).

This particular instance of the job was processing 2 .vbk files for some reason, my first thought was it was because I was short of tapes at the weekend (now added 4 more) so shortened the media expiry time so can only guess that it thinks it needs to re-back-up an older .vbk which is a bit of a pain.

Anything obvious before I log another ticket? I need to get this job re-run (have cancelled then re-tried the job) as it's going to take a good 5hrs to complete anyway & support likely won't be in touch within that timescale...

[pkelly_sts]

Came in to find this has happened again this morning, but stopped on one of the endpoint jobs rather than the backup job. (The tape job contains 4 small endpoint jobs + the main backup job).

Once again one of the jobs is sitting at 0% saying "All tape drives are in use. Waiting for a drive to become available..." and a tape is sitting in the drive but I don't know of any way to eject it to a slot (this is an MSL2024) so it can load another tape.

Have now logged as 01808088

[Edit:]

I've now noticed that for some reason the job had decided to back up all of the files related to the Endpoint job in question, i.e. both the .vbk and all the .vib files. This isn't much of an issue for me as it's only small anyway but as mentioned above it seemed the same with the full job yesterday (re-backed up a recent chain of full & incremental points). My tape jobs are configured with a "Full" media pool and an "Incremental" media pool, so these symptoms suggest to me that the tape job can sometimes get confused when a job contains BOTH .vbk AND .vib files. And yet I know that if I cancel the job now to "un-stick" it, then retry it, it'll still know that it needs to back up the same combination of files but will just get on with it, swapping tapes as required.

[Dima P.]

Paul,

I noticed in the case that you were proposed to install a hotfix. Did that help? Thanks.

[pkelly_sts]

I only got the hotfix today & have installed it so need to watch & see. As it happens the tape job ran normally last night.

[jlemaster]

I'm wondering if this hotfix worked, had a very similar issue last night where incremental media stayed in the drive when a full job started.

[foggy]

According to the case notes, it did. Anyway, I recommend contacting support directly to verify the issue and get the hotfix, if it is applicable in your case.