Ideal HP9000 Server for an LTO Library with 8xLTO3 Drives

[Alzhy]

Currentlly an N-Class serves up 16 SDLT-II drives with no problems. We're planning to upgrade to 8xLTO3 Fibre Attached Drives. At 80+MB /sec - I reckon the 8 LTO drives streaming all at once sucking data from the attached SAN/LAN may possibly swamp the I/O bus.

Any suggestions on a suitable server? I am thinking a rp7410 or rp4440. Anyone ever deployed an LTO-3 Library?

[Leif Halvarsson_2]

Hi,

Which backup software are you using ?

I don't assume you are going to run all drives (media agents if DP) on one server. In a SAN enviroment, the backup clients normally writes direct to the library and only metadata is written to the backup server.

Only media agents running un the backup server will cause a significant load on that machine. If no or only a few media agents is running there (1, 2 or perhaps 3), this server don't need to be of very high performance. I belive a rp3440 would be enough, at least if using Data Protector.

[Kurt Beyers.]

What library will you be using? How much NSR's can you put in the library.

I would choose one NSR for each two LTO3 drives (if possible). And one FC HBA for each NSR, so 4 FC HBA in the rp server. ANd linimum 2 SAN switches.

This would be an ideal setup to spread the load towards the library as much as possible.

I agree with Leif that an rp4440 server will be enough, the bottleneck probably will be in the fibre architecture towards the library.

best regards,
Kurt