NetRaid controllers

[Kevin Chappell_1]

Does anything prevent the attachment of scsi tape devices to a NetRaid controller?

[Greg Carlson]

Kevin,

There is nothing that prevents a tape from being cabled to the NetRaid card and NetRaid will see it as a tape device. That being said, DON'T cable a tape device to NetRaid. It will lead to all sorts of problems. It needs to be on a SCSI Controller either embedded or HBA. Data/parity corruption and backup corruption/failed backups are possible results of cabling a tape device to NetRaid.

Ciao,
Greg

[Stuart Browne]

Greg,

Nothing to prevent it? Have you ever done it successfully? If so, what model NetRAID, and what OS?

I've tried with 3si, 1si, 2M and 4M controllers, and not had any luck in getting the tape recognised..

[Greg Carlson]

Stuart,

I've never tried to configure a Tape Device on a NetRaid. I've seen people who have tape drives on different NetRaid controllers like the embedded NetRaid or on PCI NetRaid Controllers and have them remove them because they have failed hard drives, or data corruption or their tape backups are failing. Usually they are DAT drives like the Dat24/40. I would never recommend intentionally cabling a tape drive to a netraid. Tape drives will usually show up as TAPE in Ctrl-M--> but they won't work. When I said that there is nothing to prevent it I meant that they use the same cabling as a common tray hdd so they will physically connect.

I hope that helps clarify the issue. In summary.. Tape drives + NetRaid = Disaster waiting!

[Marino Meloni_1 · Accepted solution]

hi
I have also seen some persons with dat 24 or 40 connected to netraids,they have work but they have also caused lot of problem, these tape devices are SCSI SE and the raid controller LVD, connecting this kind of device, put all the scsi bus in SE mode, max 20 M/B sec also for hdd.
the actual bios of netraid didn't support tape devices on netraid ( I suppose because of smart routine with short time out),
for hight performances tape devices (like Ultrium), they need a host each device, so you cannot share a raid controller.
bye
marino