HIDRO virtual machine is stuck in a backup.

Products

• VM:Backup for z/VM
• VM:Backup High-Speed Disaster Recovery Option (HiDRO)

Issue/Introduction

A HIDRO JOB that normally requires a few minutes to run takes a few hours. In this instance, it had been running for almost eight hours when the case was opened. Tapes were being mounted but nothing appeared to be running. The customer could see activity on VMTAPE every few seconds mounting tapes but saw no evidence of anything moving within HIDRO.

Cause

An examination of the LG file showed many tapes being mounted then rejected with a message of ‘SYBPOO513O TAPE 00nnnn ALREADY BELONGS TO PHYSICAL POOL "SCRATCH " ‘. This reflects the VTL, TMC, or other tape catalog being out of sync with the HiDRO tape catalog.

This is typically caused by tapes that were in use by a HiDRO job that abended. The tapes may be scratched in VM:Tape but not in HiDRO.                  

Resolution

Schedule the CONDENSE, RECYCLE, and POOLCHK processes to run daily.

Additional Information

The CONDENSE, RECYCLE, and POOLCHK processes are documented in the How Tapes are Recycled section of the Administrator’s Guide.