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SAN based Autochanger question

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Greenli

Technical User
Mar 11, 2002
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We will be implementing a new ADIC i2000 autochanger on our SAN (our existing SAN attached autochanger is ADIC 1000) and I was wondering if the SAN servers (we have 7 plus the Legato server) can be configured to only see the tape drives that will be assigned to them? Can I setup an autochanger if the zoning is setup like this? I have always thought that each SAN server would have to see all the drives in a SAN attached autochanger as well as the robotic arm. Our preference is that each SAN server only see one tape drive but I am confused on how to set this up via Legato. We are running Legato 7.1.1. Any suggestions?
 
I´m not that good with SAN, but i think the backupserver needs to see all drives as well as the arm, in order for you to run jbconfig on it and dedicate each drive to a seperate storage node (the backupserver must control the arm). The SAN storage nodes themselves need only see the drive(s) which they should use. Someone please correct me if this is wrong.

Cheers!
Maverick
 
We will be implementing the similar solution,all the peieces are not in place yet, i will post once we have done so in 3 months or so.
My guess is that you create all the devices\drives\library on the Master server, then use DDS to allocate drives to the Storage node, during the setup of the library via nsrjb you are promted if you like to share the drives, this should make it avallable for SN.
We will purchase i2000 we will have one storage node, 125 windows client, we will be using P-585, Windows 2003X64 bit.
 
why you want that? I mean, if you have all devices seen by all servers, networker will see what drive to use for what backup.

Anyway, you can configure all servers to use all drives *BUT* configure the pools to restrict the tape drive to use.

Cheers.

Chacal, Inc.[wavey]
 
Hi guys,

An example below, sorry if it's too simple, don't mean to insult anyone ...

It works something like this ...

We use IBM3584 silos, where the robot is reached via one of the drives, we use drive 1 in a logical partition for this.

So we may have say 2 storage nodes in setup, + the server, and lets say 5 drives.

THe zoning is configured so the server can see the first two drives only, (these two drives are in their own logical library), and this is setup using jbconfig.

The two storage nodes have their own logical library, this contains the other 3 drives. The zoning here is set so that both storage nodes (SN) can see all drives. One SN is selected to control the jukebox, we run jbconfig on this and use DDS so the other SN can use the drives.

What you end up with is two SNs, one controls the jukebox (and therefore the robot) and can see the drives, the other just sees the drives. When it requires a tape, it is the jukebox controling SN that loads it.

Hope this helps,

Martin
 
Not beeing a SAN specialist i think it can be achieved with zoning.

The NetWorker server must not see all remote devices at the SAN/SCSI bus. The proof is easy - if you run the "inquire" command, it will just detect local devices. But of course you can still configure remote devices.

However, the NetWorker server will also permanently check for the presence of remote devices once they have been configured.
 
A lot depends on what you want to accomplish. If you want maxmimum throughput you would have a tape drive or 2 directly connected to one of the SAN servers, preferably with its own fiber card (use a different fiber card for your disks), and set it up as a storage node ... but you will have to pay for the SN license.

But if you just want to backup over the fiber you can set up ip over fiber and force your backups to that interface in the Legato client setup. That way all of the servers on the SAN can use any tape drive on the autochanger.

 
I would like more information on SAN based backup, perticulary clarion arrays, power snap, ndmp and silo setup, i am intriqued on wha doninionvp has to say, can you discribe your enviroment, performance and setup in more details, we will be getting a san soon and need to know all options on backup.
One thing though, why create all this tape libraries on SN, as Legato licencing will require seperate licence for that, why not just use DDS to share tapes with SN.
I am curios of running IP over FC, wheather the Brocade slikworm 3500 will support such an protocol and DDS implementation.
I plan as follows
One windows master server--conneted to I2000 Adic with LTO2
also connected to SAN via FC.
One SN on and same SAN, has access to same library with DDS.
 
I would only use a SN if you need maximum performance ... for example we have a server that has SAN disk, has 2 fiber cards dedicated to this, and 2 fiber cards for tape .. 2 drives to each fiber card ... we get about 80Mbs with this set up. We only achieved this thruput when this server was moved to enterprise class disk ... until we did that it couldn't send data to the tape drives fast enuff.

DDS requires a license also and once the drives are being used no one else can write to them.

We used to do fiber over IP but now that all of our servers are on GigE we dont do that anymore.

We have about 16 Brocades in our SAN and I don't know how many servers now. This is used mostly to connect to our Disk Frames. I am moving towards a tape SAN. A seperate switch just for the tape drives ... primarily fiber cards from the backup server and tape drives connected to the same 2GB switch. I will still attach the tape drives directly to the production SAN for the few storage nodes I have.



 
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