HP Shared Peripherals

[Mark Lilley]

Is there any way of sharing peripherals between several servers.

Essentially, I am looking at the option of filling a two metre rack with as many A-class servers as I can.

However, at present for every server we have a set of shared peripherals mounted in a HP's SMART Family Full Height Enclosure. What I would ideally like to do is have one set of peripherals shared between all of the A-class servers in the rack. The peripherals in there will be a DLT 8000, DDS and DVD drive.

Is this possible and how would I do it?

[Bob Inglis]

Yes it is possible to share SCSI peripherals as long as each host on the bus has a different SCSI address. HP offers a wide range of self-terminating and "Y" cables for this purpose.

[Dave Wherry]

Mark,
One option I can think of is to use the A3511A SCSI/Fibre Channel Multiplexor. This device can have up to 2 FC interfaces and 4 SCSI interfaces.
Connect your DLT, DAT and CD to the SCSI interfaces. This only leaves the 2 FC interfaces to connect to your hosts. You can also use a FC hub, A3724A. It has 10 FC ports. Connect 1 to the multiplexor leaving you 9 for hosts. You can also cascade hubs if you need more ports.
Being FC this isn't a real cheap option, but, it works.

[Michael Lampi]

The fibrechannel route is the best way to go. However, if you have the money I would go with a fibrechannel switch rather than a hub in order to obtain better performance.

If you are trying to save money, then forego the hub and switch approach. Just daisy chain the fibre from system to system to the SCSI/fibre mux. You will end up with an FC-AL (fibrechannel arbitrated loop) solution.