Partitioning an ESL 9595

[jbm]

I am familiar with quite a few tape libraries, but the ESL9595 is new to me, I think this is a rebadged quantum atl p7000?

Like the p7000 can i virtually partition an ESL9595? (8 lto2 drives partitioned in to 2 4drive libraries)?

i.e. 2 Data Protector Servers each see half of the library (4 LTO2 drives) independantly?

what are the gotchas? what do I need to purchase?

[David Ruska]

I believe the answer is yes, but I'm not a DP expert, and don't know if there's anything special you need to buy.

You might want to post your question on the DP forum, if one of the DP experts don't catch it here (although I suspect they will).

DP forum:
http://forums1.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/categoryhome.do?categoryId=251

[jbm]

I know with the quantam ATL P7000 I have to buy a "prism controller kit" or something like that makes the SCSI robot controller FC controllable. It's essentially a scsi-FC bridge that allows the robot to accept requests from multiple hosts.

Is there an HP equivalent to the native card?

[David Ruska]

The ESL9595 can be used with the E2400-160 fibre routers, to connect to a SAN. However, you can also do a shared/partitioned library with direct connect SCSI (one host controls the robot with the drives split as necessary).

[jbm]

ok. that kinda gets to the point of my question...how do I have multiple hosts control the robot? can that be done with the 9595?

[David Ruska]

Usually one host serves as the "master", and takes care of all the media load/unloads from other clients (I'm probably misusing terms here, so hopefully someone from DP will chime in and give the details).

[jbm]

I ask this question because...in a very large environment, if I have many DP servers, and I need to do Disaster Recovery(offsite) for 1, it needs to be independant. I am sharing the library, because qty-wise, it can hold much, much more data than can be feasably serviced by 1 DP server, and the logical and physical split will make the recovery of hosts on 1 DP server much, much less painful. I know I can do this with other libraries. Unfortunately, I need to do it with a 9595, and I am not familiar enough with the library to plan it this way without a definitive way to do this. It would be nice if I had a 9595 to test with.