I want to connect 5 external Tape Drive to 1 server or Cascade connection for Surestore

[BR741263]

I have 5 Surestore, DAT 8 3Pcs DAT24 1pc and DLT vs 80 1Pc and i would like to rearrange to connect all the drive to 1 server and use veritas to manage that tape drive, I don't know can i conect it as cascade or have any better way to solve this problem. Anyone have any idea please let me know, Thank you

[BR19682 · Accepted solution]

Hi there.
DAT drives can be daisychained, because the data transfer is not too fast.
You should not do this with DLT drives.
This will keep the DLT drive from streaming ( means tape is always going forth and back ).
My suggestions ( if possible ) :

1.
connect one DAT24 and the DLT to your server on separate SCSI interfaces. The DLT is fast enough and yu are still compatible with all DAT drives

2. ( if you want all drives on your server )
Connect all drives to a SCSI / fibre channel
bridge and put two FC interfaces in your server

If you have enough space on the server, copy all files to the server, put the files on tape and delete them a day later before the next backup.

BTW, connect the computers through a separate backbone for backup if possible.
That will speed up the process

Just my 2 ct.
Rgds
Alexander M. Ermes

[CA843380]

Hi,

Not knowing much about your server makes commenting in detail a bit of a problem :-).

For a fairly cheap option I would recommend the following, (SCSI-FC bridges and FC HBA's are expensive and are only necessary if you are using high end tape drives such as SLDT or LTO).

Hopefully your server has two free PCI slots. Buy two dual port scsi hba's, adaptec cards are typically recommended on HP tape drives. The DAT8 and DAT24 devices are narrow sngle ended Ultra scsi devices and the DLT80 is a wide LVDS Ultra 2 scsi device. Here is a link to the recommended HBA list for HP tape drives.

http://www.hp.com/cposupport/information_storage/support_doc/lpg50063.html

Buy the dual port versions of the AHA-2940 Ultra Wide and the AHA-29160lp ultra 3 wide.

Connect the three DAT8's to first channel of card one, daisy chained, different scsi id's obviously. Connect the DAT24 to the second channel of card one. Connect the DLT80 to first channel of card two. You then have a spare channel for an additional device if required.

You could also go even cheaper and just buy the single port versions of the above scsi HBA's. In this case daisy chain the 3 DAT8's and the DAT24 on one card and the DLT80 on its own on the other card.

If you server only has on free PCI slot, buy the dual channel option of the 29160 and put all DAT's on one channel and the DLT80 on the other.

Once everything is installed, there should be no issues using Veritas to backup to all of these drives.

Cheers,

Dave Dewar.

[BR741263]

Thank you very much for your recommandation. Actually i 'm new for Tape Backup i just have experience with single drive with Compaq proliant but now i have to take care that all using with Acer Altos 800 that i didn't touch it in longtime. By the way if i wanna by auto loader let say 7 DLT drive that i can put the tape for 1 week, which one it OK for Veritas Backup Exec 9, Thanks

[CA843380]

Hi,

For HP autoloader ISV software compatibility try this link available from hp.com.
http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/Document.jsp?objectID=lpg70071&locale=en_US&taskId=120&prodSeriesId=63826&prodTypeId=12169

Basically, our products are supported on most versions of ISV software.

The 718 model is the DLT70 autoloader.

Cheers,

Dave Dewar