How Dell Screwed Me This Week

Right. So it's been a while, and I guess it's time for another one of these posts.

Let us review - several weeks ago, I had a hell of a time with the LTO Robot. A tape kept getting stuck in the drive, and after hours wasted on the phone with Dell, I ended up taking the robot apart to manually pull the tape out. This fixed the problem only for a few minutes, and as soon as I kicked off a new backup job, another tape got stuck in another drive. Basic troubleshooting logic (as well as a lack of consistency in the failures) told me that nothing was wrong with my tapes or my drives. Dell told me otherwise.

As a result, I ended up taking the 128T LTO down, and setting up a new 132T LTO (connected to the same Windows 2003 master/media server). This was a planned upgrade anyway, so no big deal, although I resented having to rush it like that.

Things were peachy for a few days, until, lo and behold, a tape got stuck in the new LTO, bringing down the drive! I called Dell right away. Surprisingly, I was connected to a very nice support rep who actually knew what he was talking about (and who spoke and enunciated very well - an invaluable trait considering that I was calling from the machine room, surrounded by the loud hum of a thousand servers). I had my tools with me, ready to do some major hardware work, when he informed me that this was a known issue with Dell LTO devices connected to Windows 2003 servers! The fix was a simple registry modification, terminating a Netbackup service.

I couldn't believe that this was a software problem, and I told him how frustrating it was that the three other Dell reps that I spoke to had me doing all sorts of ridiculous hardware hacks, instead of trying this simple fix first. His reply was (literally) that he has been "doing this for a while" and probably knows more than the other guys at Dell! I thought about writing an angry letter to the Columbia Dell rep, but instead decided to send a nice letter praising this particular support analyst who helped me fix the problem so easily. My friend calls this "channeling my positive energy" or some retarded crap like that.

Anyway, if you have a Dell LTO Device connected to a Windows 2003 Server, and your drives keep going down because tapes are getting stuck in them, put down the screwdriver, and read this for info on the registry changes that you need to make to fix the problem.