My TSM server has six HBAs for tape use and my 3584 has 16 tape drives.
These are configured as 8 tape drives and 3 HBAs each on two switches.
This gives me 11 aliases per switch. I have just three zones in each
switch, one for each HBA. All eight tape drives are defined to each
zone. I've been configured this way for 5 years and have yet to see a
problem.

My aliases are a bit simple-minded -- tape_01 through tape_16 for the
tape drives, and things like 'columbia_1_2' for the tsm server (host
name columbia, I/O drawer 1, PCI slot 2). The zone names I use are based
on the HBA alias, so that would be zn_columbia_12 (and no, I don't know
what I'll do if I ever get a system with more than 9 I/O drawers :-).

Tom Kauffman
NIBCO, Inc

-----Original Message-----
From: ADSM: Dist Stor Manager [mailto:ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU] On Behalf Of
Schneider, John
Sent: Tuesday, February 06, 2007 6:05 PM
To: ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU
Subject: Tape drive zones for FC drives - best practices

Greetings,
        My habit in regards to zoning FC tape drives has always been to
put
one host HBA in a zone with all the tape drives it should see, and to
have a
separate zone for each host HBA.  For example, in a situation with 2
host
HBAs and 10 tape drives, I would have two zones, one with one host HBA
and 5
tape drives, and the other with the other host HBA and 5 tape drives.
Pretty simple.

        But an IBM consultant working here is telling me that the best
practice is to have a separate zone for each HBA/tape drive pair.  So in
my
example above, I would have 20 zones instead of two.   His claim is that
an
individual tape drive can hang all the other drives if they are in the
same
zone, but not if they are in separate ones.  Has anyone seen this in
real
life?

        This becomes important to me because I am about to put in new
SAN
switches, and he wants me to follow this recommendation.  I have 2 TSM
servers with 4 HBAs each, 4 NDMP nodes, and 14 tape drives.  Using my
scheme, I would have 12 zones, with his scheme I would have 56 zones.
That
seems like a lot of zones, and unnecessarily cumbersome.

        Is it really necessary to isolate each HBA/Tape drive into a
separate zone?  Do individual tape drives really hang other drives in
their
zone?

Best Regards,

John D. Schneider
Sr. System Administrator - Storage
Sisters of Mercy Health System
3637 South Geyer Road
St. Louis, MO.  63127
Email:  schnjd AT stlo.mercy DOT net
Office: 314-364-3150, Cell:  314-486-2359
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