VLS6653 + LTO4 Drives

[Michael Szeller]

I have a new VLS6653 + MSL4048 w/LTO4 Drives. I am having 2 issues.

1. The Website for the VLS6653 indicates that LTO4 support was supposed to be available in September. I can't find a firmware update for LTO4 support and the Virtual Libraries and Tape Drives I can create are only LTO3 according to the GUI. I saw another message thread where someone said they had this working. Any ideas?

2. The MSL4048 (2xLTO4 Drives) is SAN attached (not direct attached) and I cannot get it to appear in the Automigration tab. I have configured the Fibre Channel Ports to have 2 Host and 2 Storage. I have zoned the storage ports to be with the MSL4048 drives only. I have tested the MSL by zoning it with another server temporarily and then killing that just to prove the MSL is on the SAN correctly and I am zoning the correct WWNs. I also tried with a MSL2024 (also LTO4) which is on the same switch and has no success.

Firmware on the VLS6653 is 2.2.0 with the 2.2.0_100 patch installed.

[Michael Szeller]

I partially figured this out. What was not documented is that when you configure the FC ports for Storage Mode it actually changes the WWN number on them! Therefore my zoning was incorrect as it reflected the WWN when the ports were originally in Host mode. Once I added the new WWN's to the zone the VLS was able to see the drive.

Now I am just working on the LTO4 virtual tape support. Am I right in thinking if I just create LTO cartidges that are 800GB (instead of 400 for LTO3) that this will work?

[Kevin Collins_11]

Michael,

Regarding #1, the LTO4 emulation support is in the 3.x code, not 2.x code.

Regarding #2, This may be a known issue. Please contact HP support on this.

Thanks.

[Michael Szeller]

I confirmed that LTO4 support is in the v3.0.0 firmware. However HP does not want us to use it unless we are using deduplication! Apparently a new v2.x.x series firmware will be out shortly, also with LTO4 support.

Gotcha for v3 firmware users, apparently if you are using deduplication you also need 16GB of RAM. That means you also need to budget for the RAM upgrade since this box comes with 4GB.