Adding Tape Drive to SAN via F/C Routers

[Rei Enoveso]

Hi,

I've added a HVD DLT8000 to a F/C-SCSI router which is connected to our SAN. I have it working but am curious about the setup. What I've done is add the WWPN of the F/C-SCSI router via the config.sh script from the ACS 8.6 platform kit. The script adds the entries to sd.conf. I also modified st.conf. I reboot and the device files are created and everything is just dandy. My question is is the WWPN of the F/C-SCSI router supposed to be in sd.conf (which is for scsi disks)? If I remove it from sd.conf, will I lose access to the tape drive? BTW, the OS I'm running is Solaris 8. Thanks.

[Stuart Whitby]

As far as I'm aware, removing this from the sd.conf will not create any problems. There's no disk to be accessed there, so there shouldn't be any problems caused by removing it.

[Alzhy]

You should not have any tape related entries in sd.conf as Tape LUNs are managed via st.conf. I am not 101% sure though as I've seen weird tape device configs in 2.6 and 2.8 wherein if the b.t.l entries for a tape LUN are not declared on sd.conf -- the tapes are'nt configured in...

You did not mention, what kind of HBA's are you using? Qlogic's aor JNIs on your Solaris server?

[Rei Enoveso]

They are JNI. I removed WWPN for the F/C-SCSI routers and couldn't access the tape drives anymore. How does the system know which WWPN to bind to? In which file do I specify the WWPN? I looked in fcaw.conf but the only thing that jumps out at me is the def_wwpn_binding. Do I add another line for the router?

[Alzhy]

FCAW.CONF -- hmm, looks to like you have the sBus JNI Cards... Have you used EZ_Fibre before? If not, I urge you to download and use it..

On my Loop and Fabric connected JNI's, I never have added WWPN's to my conf file. Instead I have:

def_hba_binding = "fcaw*";
def_wwpn_binding = "xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx";
def_wwnn_binding = "xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx";

My sd.conf and st.conf contains the b.t.l entries for the LUN's expected on the SAN and/or zoned to a server..

[Rei Enoveso]

Right now, an entry in my st.conf looks like this:

name="st" class="scsi" target=8 lun=0;

Would I just append the wwpn tag to an entry in st.conf to point to the router's wwpn as below?

name="st" class="scsi" target=8 lun=0
wwpn="1234-1234-1234-1234";

[Alzhy · Accepted solution]

As I said, I never mucked around entering any wwn's in my sd.conf or st.conf. What you need to find out with absolute certainty is what your tape lun's target and lun numbers are and add them to sd.conf AND st.conf.

As long as your fcaw.conf is configured to do hba binding and you're not doing any static bindings, you should be set.

I attach a configuration on a server that has 4 JNI HBA's on Loop (pnt to Pnt) and one HBA connected Fabric wise.

My st.conf and sd.conf only contains B.T.L entries and no wwpn entries...

[Rei Enoveso]

Thanks for everyone's reply. :-)