IGNITE-UX on rx26nn with SAS LTO-3

[JJ Smith_1]

Just taken delivery of a new rx26nn,(can't remember the exact model as I'm not in the machine room), with V3.1 pre-installed and an externally attached SAS LTO-3 tape drive.

Whilst having no problem using make_tape_recovery, a subsequent attempt at recovery highlighted that there appeared to be no EFI hw path for the SAS tape drive.

Looking up some ignite documentation - it also seems that we cannot even use the two-stage recovery approach either.

Has anyone ever re-ignited from a SAS tape drive ?

Does anyone know if this scenario will ever be supported - or if there is a technical reason that it cannot be supported ?

Regards
JJ

[Steven E. Protter]

Shalom JJ,

Ignite only works with certain tape drives. Boot and recovery is generally only supported on HP supplied drives.

If this is a third party drive, it may simply never work.

HP has designed HP-UX to be an industrial strength, reliable OS. They have done this by means of severely limiting the supported hardware universe.

SEP

[Bill Hassell]

Tape drives (and CD/DVD drives) are quite difficult to handle because there are a lot of variations in implementation. Ignite and more importantly, the CPU firmware can only provide limited support for non-HP hardware. Kernel drivers are not constrained by the few megs available in ROMs and a memory-based boot kernel.

[JJ Smith_1]

Bill, Steve
Thankyou for your response.

All of the hardware was sourced from HP, I just wanted a quick sanity check on techie experience of SAS tape drives with Ignite.

The Ignite product documents seem to suggest that tape recovery, both native and 2-stage is only available for a number of 'parallel' SCSI devices - I can't find anything for SAS devices.

We'll be approaching HP sales and sorting this out - it looks like we have been sold a hardware bundle that does not allow the use of ignites from tape - as we don't have an ignite server here, make_net_recovery is not an option; so I'm guessing that our only way forward will be to replace the tape drive/HBA with a standard SCSI interface.

Regards
JJ

[Bill Hassell · Accepted solution]

SAS = serial attached SCSI.

This is a new feature for a small number of brand new HP-UX boxes. Since it is nothing like standard SCSI or fibre, then it is quite normal to expect it not to work with processor ROMs, Ignite and possibly fbackup will also have a problem. In fact, the Getting Started pdf file at HP's website only mentions Proliant (Intel) servers. So while the tape drive is an HP, the interface was primarily designed for PC servers. Ignite and the rx26xx interfaces are just not ready to boot from a SAS device. Maybe someday.

[Torsten.]

Obviously even SAS drives are supported with hp-ux, according to this example:

http://www.hp.com/products1/storage/compatibility/tapebackup/IPF/Detail/16-0037-0131.html#OS

But you probably need the right combination of HBA, drive, driver and software.

[Torsten.]

Check this matrix, the example before was LTO-2,

http://www.hp.com/products1/storage/compatibility/tapebackup/software/14-9999-0004.html#matrixtable

[JJ Smith_1]

Bill,
I think you've confirmed what I suspected.

Points duly awarded.

Thanks
JJ