About SCSI reservation conflicts

The NetBackup Automatic Volume Recognition process (avrd) manages access to tape devices. A properly configured NetBackup environment and properly configured tape devices should not receive a reservation conflict message from a tape drive. When avrd starts, it issues an SPC-2 SCSI release to all configured, nondisabled tape drive paths that are currently in the Up state. The command releases all devices that were SPC-2 reserved at the time of a system restart or crash. The SCSI release command returns tape devices to general availability after a system crash.

If the avrd process receives a reservation conflict message, it changes the status of the device to PEND. It also writes the following message in the system log:

Reservation Conflict status from DRIVENAME (device NUMBER)

Also, the NetBackup Administration Console Device Monitor or the output from the vmoprcmd command shows PEND in the Control column.

If a conflict occurs, a reservation problem can exist. If the HBA that reserves the drive is unavailable (for example, due to a system crash or hardware failure), it cannot release the reservation. NetBackup cannot release or break an SPC-2 SCSI reservation automatically. Force a release or break the reservation to make the drive available, even for a failover server in a cluster environment.

When the conflict is resolved, the following message is written to the log:

Reservation Conflict status cleared from DRIVENAME (device NUMBER)