When I last checked (about a month ago), you cannot boot AIX from fibre 
attached tape (disk is ok).  You would definitely have to boot from other media 
(eg CD) to use these tapes.  You would then have to manually mount the tape by 
taking the library offline and using the library front panel before requesting 
the restore from, say, /dev/rmt0. 
 
You will have to get someone to confirm that the fibre attached drives can be 
'seen' by AIX after the system has been booted from CD.  They may not be valid 
restore sources at this point.
 
Cheers,
 
Dave..  
 
 

        -----Original Message----- 
        From: ADSM: Dist Stor Manager on behalf of Thomas Denier 
        Sent: Tue 3/23/2004 6:35 AM 
        To: ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU 
        Cc: 
        Subject: mksysb tapes on fibre-attached 3590
        
        

        We are considering migrating our TSM system to an AIX system with 3590
        tape drives in a 3494 tape library. The drives would be connected using
        FCP (Fibre Channel Protocol). The host would be a pSeries system. We are
        currently leaning toward a p650.
        
        Given this configuration, would it be possible to restore AIX using
        3590 mksysb tapes? If so, would it done by booting from tape or by
        booting from CD and telling the software to read a mksysb tape? How
        would we deal with the library? In particular, would we have to use
        the stand-alone tape feature of the library?