LTO 3 attached to MSA 1000

[Mark Stoner_1]

Hey guys, I am looking for some assistance in configuring a new drive for my test lab.

I want to connect an LTO 3 drive to a MSA1000 fabric switch and make it available to all servers connected into the fabric.

Is this possible? and has anyone tried it?

Otherwise I will connect direct to each server when required.

[raadek]

You should be able to SAN-attach a tape library. However I am not sure if it is possible with just a drive.

What particular product are you referring to?

Rgds.

[Mark Stoner_1]

I am not looking at a particular device at the moment. I did look at the ultrium 960 but it does not appear to have a fc connector ules it is part of a library.

I would be looking at using NetBackup media server to connect the device.

mark

[raadek · Accepted solution]

So probably I was correct - you can hook a tape library to the SAN switch, but you cannot do that with a drive (which is meant to be a part of a library).

[Mark Stoner_1]

THanks for the prompt reply, I will look at the budget available and then look for the library / device

mark

[Curtis Ballard]

You've pretty much figured it out but to confirm the speculation in this thread, LTO Fibre Channel drives are not available as standalone or rack mount drives.

The entry level product for a Fibre Channel drive is the MSL 2024 with native fibre channel direct connect. That is a nice little starter product. It will plug directly into your switch. That's nice for simplicity and cost but it means that the drive will see all SAN traffic and is succeptible to a "rogue host" sending an unwanted command which can cause a backup failure.

When you have a tape drive connected directly to the SAN at a minimum you should enable zoning in your switch so that only servers that have to use the tape drive can access it.

For a little more robust solution you can order the MSL 2024 Parallel SCSI version and hook it to a N1200-320 Fibre Channel router which will provide the SAN isolation.

[Randy Rayfield]

You can use a fiber->scsi bridge and it would be avialable.

[Mark Stoner_1]

Guys,

Thanks for the replies.

Cosidering this is for a testlab only, I have decided to go for a direct SCSI attached ultrium 960.

I cant justify the cost for a library in test when we have just purchased an ADIC Scalar i2000 for the production environment.

Once again, thanks for you replies

Mark