Routing Backups through a Fiber card.

[Khalid A. Al-Tayaran]

Hi all,
We managed to connect out production N-class server to our enterprise backup solution TSM (Tivoli Storage Manager) from IBM. We installed a fiber channel adapter in the N-class (part no# A6795A "Tachyon TL/TS Fiber Channel Mass Storage Adapter") and connected to the SAN switch. We can see the server from the switch and the server sees the SAN switch very fine. But when backups are triggered data is still transferred through LAN!! We are looking for help to solve this issue. We tried "arp" but it isn't helping us, any opinions??

[Michael Tully]

Do you have appropriate zoning for your fibre card --> switch --> to tape library set up? If I read this correctly, do you have devices that you can see from the fibre path?

[Khalid A. Al-Tayaran]

Hi,
Yes we have made a zone on the SAN box. and for devices through the FC here's what I get from ioscan:
0/10/0/0 td HP Tachyon XL2 Fibre Channel Mass St
0/10/0/0.1 fcp FCP Domain
0/10/0/0.1.20.255.0 fcpdev FCP Device Interface
0/10/0/0.1.21.255.0 fcpdev FCP Device Interface

[Shaikh Imran]

Hi,
I suppose in Tivoli Storage Manager there is a utility called as SMIT which manages and allows to manage the SCSI and SAN Devices.
i think there you have the option as
Discover Devices Supported by Tivoli Storage Manager
This option discovers devices on a Fibre Channel SAN that are supported by Tivoli Storage Manager and makes them AVAILABLE. If a device is added to or removed from an existing SAN environment, rediscover devices by selecting this option. Devices must be discovered first so that current values of device attributes are shown in the List Attributes of a Discovered Device option. Supported devices on FC SAN are tape drives, autochangers, and optical drives. The Tivoli Storage Manager device driver ignores all other device types, such as disk.
I think after doing this then do insf -e on HP server and then check from ioscan.

Regards

[Johan Lorimier]

HI,
I dont think that are is any network issue here. Using the SAN, you systeme must use some tape drive or pseudo-tape drive to do the backup. You msut configure TSM to specify that this host use tape drive via SAN. I also think that you must install a complement software of tivoli on you system to make it using the TSM infrastucture.

Sorry, if it is not clear but I dont know about TSM (we usualy use networker and netbackup )

Johan

[Abdul Rahiman]

Khalid,

What you are trying to do here is to setup LAN FREE backup using TSM server. There are few things involved in setting up the LAN free backups with TSM.

1. You have to configure your tape library/drives on the system that you want to do LAN free backups using zoning on the SAN switch and make sure the tape drives can be seen from the UX system.

2. Install the TSM StorageAgent software for HP-UX on your HP-Ux system.

3. Configure your TSM client to work with StorageAgent, there are few steps involved and I can send you a document if you need.

4. Once it is configured, Start the storage Agent software on your server.

You may be able to find additional info. if you search for "LAN FREE backups" @ redbooks.ibm.com

HTH,
Abdul Rahiman.

[RAC_1]

I think, your TSM server should know client on FC card NIC.

If FC crd NIC is xx.yy.zz.aa, then
TSM should have client xx.yy.zz.aa. then
coomunication to this client will be on xx.yy.zz.aa.

Whatever you use for name resolution on TSM server, should know client by the FC card NIC

Anil