Thanks for the help.  This is great. This anwers the WHAT part !

Now, any thoughts on the WHY side of the question (as in WHY is one 3580 
an NL and the others N ??) 




Thomas Rupp <Thomas.Rupp AT ILLWERKE DOT AT> 
Sent by: "ADSM: Dist Stor Manager" <ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU>
09/12/2005 12:47 PM
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"ADSM: Dist Stor Manager" <ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU>


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[ADSM-L] AW: [ADSM-L] LTO2 3580 drives and SAN switch port types






Have a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fibre_channel_port

Thomas Rupp


-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
Von: ADSM: Dist Stor Manager [mailto:ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU] Im Auftrag 
von 
Zoltan Forray/AC/VCU
Gesendet: Montag, 12. September 2005 18:30
An: ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU
Betreff: [ADSM-L] LTO2 3580 drives and SAN switch port types


I have a question that hopefully someone can answer, when it comes to the
above.

We recently connected two additional 3580 drives to our IBM 2109-S08 SAN
switch.  They seemed to connect OK but now one of them has lost
connectivity and we haven't been able to figure it out (trying to open it
with AIX tapeutil failes with a code=50).

As we were investigating the switches, we noticed that for some reason,
some of the PORT definitions for the LTO drives appear as N-TYPE and
NL-TYPE.

What is the distinction between the NL and N and how is that defined ? The
drive with the problem is coming across as a N-TYPE when everyone else
seems to be an NL-type.

Yes, I have updates the firmware on all drives to the latest.  There are
two 3580 libraries. One is at 6.03 and the other at 6.01, FWIW !