NESE - NESE Tape Servicd Down Due to Tape Library Faults – Incident details

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NESE Tape Servicd Down Due to Tape Library Faults

Resolved
Major outage
Started 29 days agoLasted 1 day

Affected

NESE Tape Storage

Major outage from 10:30 PM to 1:18 PM, Operational from 1:18 PM to 10:48 PM

Updates
  • Resolved
    UTC
    Resolved

    Vendor technicians have applied temporary repairs, and NESE Tape service is fully available.

    The immediate cause of the tape library stopping all tape movements, which was the reason for suspending tape recalls, was a mechanical failure involving a tape drive and the "robot arm" which moves tapes. Essentially, neither one would let go first.

    The vendor technicians released the drive, tape, and robot arm from this "deadly embrace" and removed the stuck "gripper" from the arm assembly. Technicians will return later to complete the repair, and no downtime is expected to be needed for completion.

    Since the tape library was returned to service, I have observed successful recalls from tape. We will continue working with the vendor to find root causes and apply fixes to make the NESE Tape service more robust.

  • Investigating
    UTC
    Investigating

    Apologies for the false sense of resolution, colleagues. This is my first time running an incident in InStatus and I appear to have clicked unwisely.

  • Resolved
    UTC
    Resolved
    This incident has been resolved.
  • Investigating
    UTC
    Investigating

    NESE Tape service may have been impaired or unavailable since approximately 6:30 PM EDT on 7/21/2026. The service has been administratively shut down since 9:45 AM on 7/22/2026. The specific symptoms are that the tape library is failing to move and load tape cartridges and the library cannot be reached by the software that manages migating files between tape and disk.

    The vendor, IBM, has been engaged at the highest supported priority, "Severity One." IBM routinely has techicians trained on the TS4500 library on site at MGHPCC in Holyoke, and we expect expert examination and service to begin soon.

    The IBM TS4500 tape library which supports the NESE Tape service began alerting to an internal issue at about 6:30 PM EDT on 7/21/2026 and taking exceptions related to changing tapes in tape drives. It is not yet clear when this first had an effect on the service.

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