There's a very good technical reason for keeping your SANs separate. 
There are serious known incompatabilities between different HBAs, even 
when both are used for tape. NetApp, for example, recommends not putting 
any devices (except a library) on the same SAN as a NetApp, even if it 
uses the same type of HBA. I've seen very bad things happen when a 
NetApp and a Solaris box were on the same tape SAN, including system 
crashes.

It all depends on your requirements; if uptime is critical to your 
environment, you don't want to skimp on hardware.

matt

Shyam Hazari wrote:
> Thank you all for y'r responses. The consensus is to have a single SAN
> for both disk arrays and tape SAN.  It saves resources and easy to
> manage a single SAN. Most of them haven't seen any issues so far. I am
> more inclined in configuring this way.
> 
> But some people use different SANs becuase of their company policy of
> segragating the DATA and Tape SANs.
> 
> Thanx Again
> 
> -Shyam
> 
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Shyam Hazari <shazari AT gmail DOT com>
> Date: Jun 7, 2005 6:14 PM
> Subject: Tape SAN + Data SAN
> To: veritas-bu AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu
> 
> 
> We are in the process of  buying a STK tape library with LTO (Fiber)
> drives.  I have two options.
> 
> 1) use the existing SAN infrastructure to connect the tape drives. I
> don't have to buy any extra switches as I have plenty of available
> ports.
> 
> or
> 
> 2) buy extra switches.
> 
> I would prefer to go with option 2.  My question is , anyone using the
> existing SAN by mixing the tape libraries and the disk arrays ?
> 
> TIA
> 
> -Hazari
> 
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