Cleaning tapes can cause premature T10000A and T10000B tape drive read and write failures to occur.

Asset ID:	1-73-1021795.1
Update Date:	2010-08-13
Keywords:

Solution Type FAB (standard) Sure

Solution 1021795.1 : Cleaning tapes can cause premature T10000A and T10000B tape drive read and write failures to occur.

Impact

This cleaning cartridge issue can cause drives to experience permanent read or write errors. This in turn can cause the customer job to end abnormally and the affected cartridge to be marked as bad, resulting in increased drive replacements.

Contributing Factors

This problem can occur on mainframe or open systems attached drives. Newer versions of the cleaning cartridge are more likely to experience the issue. This does not include the next cleaning cartridges that are due to be available in March of 2010. All T10000A and T10000B systems are impacted. T10000 drives are only potentially impacted after using an affected cleaning tape.

Symptoms

Look for Fault Symptom Codes (FSCs) 3961 and/or 3965 errors while writing. These will show up as permanent write errors to the customer. Offline diagnostics will fail with FSC 396E.

Root Cause

A low percentage of T10000 cleaning cartridges have been found to be too abrasive. Analysis of some of the drive failures has established root cause to be write/read head modules to be worn by these abrasive cleaning tapes.

Corrective Action

Workaround

Install 1.44.110 (T10000A) or 1.44.210 (T10000B) EC Released microcode that will detect the cleaning cartridge serial number and will clean based on whether or not it is a highly abrasive cleaning cartridge. 1.46.x09 microcode was released as of July 8 2010, which supports all T10K environments and will eliminate the need for any special builds related to cleaning tapes.

This code is available on the USR site located at;

https://dlrequest-zn-dlapps1.sfbay.sun.com/usr/search

Resolution

The cleaning media specification has been reviewed and revised. The media with the new spec began shipping on July 8, 2010. It can be recognized as it has the Oracle brand on it versus the Sun brand.

Special build code (RV.44.108/208) code changes were embedded in 1.44.110/210 GA released code. This GA code also has a fix for 091F errors that were brought out by the special build RV.44.108/208 code.

Comments

If you suspect that your account is having the above listed problems, please install 1.44.110/210 code as soon as possible. A forced drive dump and the associated event-log files are required as part of the information necessary to identify whether your account is experiencing the identified problem, if this type of support is needed.

For information about FAB documents, its release processes, implementation strategies and billing information, go to the following URL:

http://tns.central/fab

For Sun Authorized Service Providers go to:

http://tns.central/SPE/fab/

In addition to the above you may email:

[email protected]

Modification History
Changes made since initial publication.

15-Feb-2010

Changed from Preliminary to Resolved. Rewrote "Workaround", "Resolution" and "Comments" sections.

Internal Contributor/submitter
[email protected]

Internal Eng Responsible Engineer
[email protected] Responsible Manager: [email protected]

Internal Services Knowledge Engineer
[email protected]

Internal Eng Business Unit Group
NWS (Storage)

Internal Sun Alert & FAB Admin Info
19-Jan-2010: Completed draft and sent to Extended Review.
21-Jan-2010: No feedback from Ext Rvw - sending to Publish.

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