Hi........

We use 7-IBM LTO3s and 7-IBM LTO4s directly connected to an IBM 9133-55A 
w/8-WAY, 64GB of Memory and 4-I/O drawers.  Tape drive HBAs and SAN HBAs are 
P/N 03N5014.  Tape Library is an IBM 3584-L32/D32s using LTO3 tapes.

Everything works A Ok here........ 

-----Original Message-----
From: ADSM: Dist Stor Manager [mailto:ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU] On Behalf Of 
Laks, Brian
Sent: Friday, March 04, 2011 9:32 AM
To: ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU
Subject: [ADSM-L] 5 out of 9 aint bad

I have 9 LTO-4 drives connected to our TSM server, only 5 of them work at any 
time after upgrading to a new fiber card.

We have tried two different fiber cards (qlogic and emulex) and still only 5 
drives.

We have Confirmed latest drivers and firmware with IBM support.  The old 2gig 
fiber card still works with all 9 drives, but is considerably slower than 5 
drives on an 4g card.

The new cards are both multi port cards, but only one port is being used.  
Multipath drivers are not being used.  9 drives are zoned to one port.

IBM support believes it to be hardware since the old card works, so we 
purchased a second card of different manufacture.  Now the problem exists on 
two fiber cards of different manufacture so I'm real reluctant to think its a 
hardware problem any more.

Interestingly, the 5 good drives vary.  I can unload the drivers and reload 
everything and drives that were previously unavailable work while drives that 
were working are then unavailable.  It seems kind of random.  All the dives 
show up in the OS, and TSMDLST show them all as well.  I uninstalled old 
drivers and reinstalled them exactly as per IBM support instructions, and 
rebuilt the drive and library paths in tsm during each reload as per IBM 
support guidelines.

Has anyone seen anything like this?  I'm absolutely baffled.  I'm thinking we 
are going to have to zone 5 drives to one port and 4 drives to the other, but 
the SAN admin type is reluctant since all 9 drives work with the original card. 
 My guess is that somewhere in the drivers its smart enough to know that 9 
LTO-4's to a single 4g port is silly in the first place.

Maybe someone wants 4 LTO-4's so this problem just goes away :)  The 5 drives 
work with fewer problems and better throughput than the 9 drives on the old 
card.

Thanks for reading, Have a great day.

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