Overland tape storage system on VIO servers

[macrun95]

Does anyone happen to know how to get an Overland NEO 4000e changer and tape drives to be recognized by VIO servers?

We had the changer installed and zoned on our fibre channel network to our 9117-570 but get an error message when running cfgdev that it can't find the devices.fcp.changer fileset. In all my research I've found that there are no filesets by that name but it is just a generic message because VIO/AIX can't find proper filesets for it. Overland support says they don't supply any special drivers/filesets for AIX but they say the changer will work on AIX. It does see one of the four tape drives and has labelled it rmt0.

Thanks,
Eric

 

[AIXLogician]

Hmmm,

After reading your post, it gives me feeling that you are missing Atape Driver which is (IBM AIX Enhanced Tape and Medium Changer Device Driver).

Do this, run lslpp -L | grep Atape.driver, do you see any Atape driver?

If you don't see it, then install the Atape.driver, but remember that it requires a reboot.
You can obtain the Atape.driver from IBM Fix central website or from your CD/DVD or from your NIM server's LPP SOURCE if you keep one.

After installing run lsdev -Cctape, you will see something like
smc0 Available 02-08-02 IBM 3573 Tape Medium Changer (FCP)

I hope this answer your question.

 

[macrun95]

Thanks.

In order to get it to work I think we are going to have to install another fibre card and present that card directly to the TSM lpar. It doesn't work being zoned out on our current switch.

 

[itsp1965]

I am no AIX/TSM expert by any means but in many situations I have seen admins avoiding VIOS enabling TSM servers as they definitely need their own dedicated resources (especially HBAs) in order to function properly.

 

[AIXLogician]

I am not getting what you are trying to achieve here. Are we talking about VIOS or TSM?
For TSM, the tape drive should be connected (for tape and copy pool writing).

But for regular disks like rootvg and tsmvg - backup pool(disks), you can also use NPIV.

If you are saying, you need to install a new fibre card, add it to TSM and in turn connect it to Tape drive, in that case as well you need the Atape.driver driver to recognize the changer.