From K370's SCSI (SE) Parallel to Ultrium 230's SCSI LVD/SE

[Jose Mosquera]

Few days ago I've posted the following case in the Servers/9000 room (http://forums1.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=224510&admit=716493758+1064501210108+28353475). So, after an answer I am confused now. Is somebody able to clear up me this case according to their real experience in similar situations? Can somebody certify Joshua's recommendation?

Aditional Info:
K370's SCSI (SE) Parallel female port: HD50
Ultrium 230's SCSI LVD/SE female port: HD68
Paralan's MS16 SCSI Conversor both sides female ports: HD68

Rgds.

[Steven E. Protter]

We have Ultrium 230e's connected to our LVD SCSI cards/connectors.

I have seen warnings from experts about connecting them to SE devices.

Those warnings were repeated by our hardware CE who came to help us diagnose issues with our three external Ultrium drives.

These drives are self terminating and do not require terminators.

SEP

[Jose Mosquera]

Hi again,

Our Ultrium 230 LTO is an external unit (230e).

[Steven E. Protter]

We have the same hardware, three of them Jose.

They work great. They are connected via the cables that came with the drives to LVD SCSI connectors.

Those are on one of two SCSI/LVD cards. They have LVD stamped on the back of the cards.

If you have this setup, the drives will work, Ignite, fbackup, data protector, whatever.

SEP

[Steven E. Protter]

Here is data from a working system.

ioscan

0/3/0/0 ext_bus SCSI C895 Ultra2 Wide LVD
0/3/0/0.1 target
0/3/0/0.1.0 tape HP Ultrium 1-SCSI


Thats a working system.

Note the notation on the SCSI card.

SEP

[Jose Mosquera]

Hi Steven,

We have a lot of these Ultrium units running perfectly when the server have a LVD card (i.e: Class L servers). Our problem is when try into a K Class server that it doesn't support this type of cards (LVD), it only have available a SCSI(SE) Paralell card.

Rgds.

[Eugeny Brychkov]

Do not connect this way. SE bus is only 5MB/s speed, and this speed is unsufficient to keep LTO drive streaming and drive will be doing shoeshining its heads and tape and will have even worse speed than 5MB/s and due to excessive mech utilization may die prematurely.
I think maybe connecting to HSC HVD card (20-40MB/s) using converter will do the trick, but who knows...
The best way is to connect drives to FC bridge (for example to 2/1 or 4/1) and connect this bridge to K-server with FC. This should be even supported configuration!
Eugeny

[Joshua Scott]

Sorry I confused you. I'll try to be more clear.

1. The Ultrium 230 will work with just a simple cable that has 50pin on one side and 68pin on the other. Looking at Paralan's website, it appears that the MS16 will be of no use to you. It is intended to allow SE devices on an LVD bus. You have a SE bus. There are no devices that will speed up a scsi bus.

2. Because of the excessive wear I would not recommend this setup. HOWEVER, as Steven clearly shows, it DOES work. my only point was that there are cheaper drives that will produce the same performance on a SE bus.

See this thread:
http://forums1.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=227333

Josh