From: Jonathan Williams (jonathw@shubertorg.com)
Date: Thu May 16 2002 - 13:55:43 EDT
Ok...Either this is a Tru64 thing, or an Informix thing. So I'll start here and
hope it's a Tru64 thing. We have 4 systems (three ES40 5.1, and one ES45 5.1a),
and one TL895 Tape Library. The tape library plugs into a Fibre channel tape
converter (controller?), and this in turn pulgs into a 16-port fibre switch--and
all the system plug into this switch as well. This allows us to have all of the
tape drives available to all of the systems at all times. We use these drives
to backup our Informix Databases every night. We backup our main online
database and a backup database (which is identical to the online) everynight at
the same time (two different systems, two different drives). Once in a while
(seems to be happening more frequently as time goes on), one of the backups will
fail with ISAM error number 28 (No space left on device). But if we try to do
the backup again, it will be ok. So obviously there was enough space on the
tape...so something else must be wrong. I was thinking about it, and--I
think--every time a backup fails, it is not the only backup that is running at
that time. Is it possible that the simultaneous backups might be causing
something odd within the fibre channel tape converter? Or maybe in the switch?
Causing Informix to not be able to write to the tape, and thinks that the tape
is full because of this? It doesn't happen too often, but often enough to be a
concern. And it's because it doesn't happen everytime that I wonder if it's
hardware at all...and maybe it's just the wonderful world of Informix. Has
anyone else had any sort of similar setup and situation? Thanks in advance.
Jonathan Williams
Unix Systems Administrator
The Shubert Organization, Inc.
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