Tapes n Drives. Drives n Tapes

[doodleman99]

do we think there is a way of getting monitor to look at a tape drive and check to see if media is loaded?

My problem... I have about 20 sites with users who are insistant on not replacing the tapes after a daily backup.
on many backup reports, they fail to mention there was not tape in the drive.

if i can get an alert at the end of each day telling me a tape hasnt been inserted, that will give me and excuse to shout at someone (<3 shouting at people) hehehhehe

thanks for your input/ideas guys

LOVE KS-Soft!

[Paul_NHS]

Tapes are usually SCSI devices, so you would need to query the SCSI bus. Tape drive manufacturers often have a program that will query the tape unit, but I don't know if you can run them as command line programs.

cheers, Paul

[doodleman99]

Tapes are usually SCSI devices, so you would need to query the SCSI bus. Tape drive manufacturers often have a program that will query the tape unit, but I don't know if you can run them as command line programs.

cheers, Paul

all of my drives are external USB.

im thinking even an attempt to read the media lable will do the job?
if it cant read it - there's no tape

[KS-Soft Europe]

Actually, there is a Win32_TapeDrive WMI, so you may try "WMI" test method with query like:

Code: Select all

select Availability from Win32_TapeDrive

Also you may use Status or StatusInfo fields and filter particular tape by SystemName, I suppose. Please, read the following article for details: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa394491.aspx

Hope it helps.

Regards,
Max

[doodleman99]

Actually, there is a Win32_TapeDrive WMI, so you may try "WMI" test method with query like:

Code: Select all

select Availability from Win32_TapeDrive

Also you may use Status or StatusInfo fields and filter particular tape by SystemName, I suppose. Please, read the following article for details: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa394491.aspx

Hope it helps.

Regards,
Max

will give it a wiz

[doodleman99]

Actually, there is a Win32_TapeDrive WMI, so you may try "WMI" test method with query like:

Code: Select all

select Availability from Win32_TapeDrive

Also you may use Status or StatusInfo fields and filter particular tape by SystemName, I suppose. Please, read the following article for details: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa394491.aspx

Hope it helps.

Regards,
Max

ok i know im going to to get </head in hands> for this one but.....

im having a problem getting the Active RMA agent to access the servers WMI.

basically - the agent is installed on a server which is not on the domain.
the Tape drive is connected to a server ON the domain.
now.... there is an option there to select a 'Host' which by default is 'localhost' but if i try to point it to the server on the domain i just get "the RPC server is unavailable? i have tried
ServerName
\\ServerName
and neither of them work?

is that to be expected?

[KS-Soft Europe]

"RPC Service is unavailable"? Hm. Please ensure "RPC" service is started on target machine. Also please read the following articles:
http://www.microforge.net/kb/39
http://www.microforge.net/kb/62

Beside that, please specify appropriate user credentials into "Connection Manager" for remote host and pick "WMI" from "Use this account as default for the following test methods (list of test methods)" list. Connection Manager provides one convenient place to store account information necessary to perform connections to remote systems. http://www.ks-soft.net/hostmon.eng/mfra ... htm#conmgr

Regards,
Max

[KS-Soft]

Also could you check firewall settings?

Regards
Alex

[doodleman99]

"RPC Service is unavailable"? Hm. Please ensure "RPC" service is started on target machine. Also please read the following articles:
http://www.microforge.net/kb/39
http://www.microforge.net/kb/62

Beside that, please specify appropriate user credentials into "Connection Manager" for remote host and pick "WMI" from "Use this account as default for the following test methods (list of test methods)" list. Connection Manager provides one convenient place to store account information necessary to perform connections to remote systems. http://www.ks-soft.net/hostmon.eng/mfra ... htm#conmgr

Regards,
Max

the two ideas from Microforge didnt work
i also tried using the connection manager but that didnt work either - also, that might not be a good idea because i have about 20 different domains and that might complicate things a little?

for UNC tests (and others) whenever i need to specify a Username and Password, it works fine?
it's only with the WMI :'( which is a shame because it's such an awesome test!! (but there are only two domains with this problem so it's no biggie)

we dont have WinFirewall running and i think the first example from microforge will take care of that if it were an issue?

i always have the option to install the client onto a machine on the domain and im sure it will work fine.
do we think there is another way of doing this without using WMI? maybe setting up some kind of remote storage from the current machine to point to the problem machine? dont know enough about the subject so im sorry if i sound like a pratt heheheh

thanks guys!

[doodleman99]

oh..... another thing.......

For the "name Space" section, because it generated that automatically for 'localhost' it is set to "root\cimv2"

Not______too______sure_____what i need to change that to :/
could that be the issue here?

(also FYI i have tried using an IP instead of the UNC)

thanks again,
James

[KS-Soft Europe]

the two ideas from Microforge didnt work

It's a pity... Probably, this article helps: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa389290.aspx

i also tried using the connection manager but that didnt work either - also, that might not be a good idea because i have about 20 different domains and that might complicate things a little?

I do not agree with you. Connection manager is pretty convenient. You just have to enter username/password for each domain once, instead of populating username/passwords into "Connect as" boxes. What will you do if password changes? Using Connection manager you just have to change it in one place. Beside that, You may provide "default" account that will be used by HostMonitor for every resource not included in the list. To do so, type * as resource name. Then you may provide name of the server/domain or type * instead of server name. In 1st case HostMonitor will send authentication information to the specified server; in 2nd case (unc=* and sever=*) HostMonitor will connect to the server that was specified as test parameter.

we dont have WinFirewall running and i think the first example from microforge will take care of that if it were an issue?

Any other third party firewalls/antiviruses?

do we think there is another way of doing this without using WMI? maybe setting up some kind of remote storage from the current machine to point to the problem machine? dont know enough about the subject so im sorry if i sound like a pratt heheheh

Actually, we know nothing about your devices. If it supports SNMP protocol, you may use "SNMP Get" test method. If it record log files, you may use "Text Log" test method, and so on. So, everything is up to you

For the "name Space" section, because it generated that automatically for 'localhost' it is set to "root\cimv2"

It's Ok. Win32_TapeDrive class belongs to root\cimv2 namespace.


Regards,
Max

[greyhat64]

Another tool I frequently use to learn what's available via WMI and to troubleshoot WMI availability is the WMI Code Creator by Microsoft. And what'dya know - it's FREE!

Test the resulting script from two different machines to verify consistency. If it is a server side problem, the error you get from running this tool should correspond with what you're getting from AHM.