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MSL 4048 zoning

 
PRABHAT KUMAR GUPTA
Occasional Contributor

MSL 4048 zoning

we have gone for MSL4048 2 Ultrium 960 4 Gb FC library . Also we have San switch 4/32 with 4Gb SFP transreceivers . to get the best performance while backup ,should i go for zoning . If yes . Then Pls help me with configuration details
3 REPLIES 3
Norm Pettigrew
Advisor

Re: MSL 4048 zoning

Hi Gupta, We have the same library with 2 LTO3 drives and I have a similar question in zoning this library as we currently have a storageTek with 2 drives but the library has a crossroads router and I Zoned that World wide Name from a single switch. My question is similar as the MSL4048 has 2 fibre connections one from each drive so I want to know can I zone this over 2 switches for failover and load balancing and also I can see the WWNames from the tape drives in the fabric but I cannot see the WWName for the library itself? I would be happy to swap any information you get on your query and I will do the same. Regards Norm npettigrew@silverchain.org.au
Mark Poeschl_2
Honored Contributor

Re: MSL 4048 zoning

Not a complete answer, but I found this document:

http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bc/docs/support/SupportManual/c00908870/c00908870.pdf

In particular:

"Each Fibre Channel tape drive in the Library has two Fibre Channel ports. Only one port may be used at a time, but both ports can be connected for path fail over if your application supports path fail over. If
you are using only one port, you can use either port."

I don't know of a tape backup application or driver in the world that supports multipath access, so I'd stick with one fiber connection per drive.

The library controller in these library apparently somehow acts as a slave of one or both tape drives. I couldn't see anything in that doc about how you'd address the library directly from your backup server.
Curtis Ballard
Honored Contributor

Re: MSL 4048 zoning

You OS should find the robot behind the drives automatically but because it is behind a drive it may not show in your switch and probably can't be zoned by itself.

Zoning is highly recommended and you should zone the drives in your SAN so that only servers that will be writing to the tape drive have access to the tape drive. You should also disable RSM unless your backup app requires it (most don't) and you should disable TUR polling if you have Windows 2003 server anywhere in the system.

Performance can be impacted by unnecessary traffic from hosts that don't have to access the drive.