On Tue, 28 Oct 2008, JAJA (Jamie Jamison) wrote:

> I have a SpectraLogic T950 tape library with six LTO4 tape drives.
> SpectraLogic replaced all of the drives earlier this year because of
> problems with the IBM hardware and the new drives that I received have
> dual fiber channel ports. Right now I have two drives that are dedicated
> to NDMP backups and which are directly connected to a NetApp filer and
> four drives that are connected to my master server via fiber channel and
> a switch. I have a separate FC card for the library robotic control that
> is directly connected to the library from the master server.
>
> We're bringing in a new NetApp filer and implementing a VTL on our
> DataDomain restorers. Rather than connecting the current NDMP drives to
> the new filer, with one drive per head, I'd like to implement SSO so
> that I have a pool of six drives that can be used for any kind of backup
> or for duplication. But looking at those dual FC ports on the drives
> makes me wonder if there is anything I can do with them. I'm wondering
> if I can be lazy and instead of implementing SSO just connect all six
> drives to the FC fabric and on two of the drives use the second fiber
> channel port for a direct connection to the NetApp filer. Is there
> anything useful that I can do with these ports?

I would (and do) go with SSO.  Spectra Logic released an 
upgrade just yesterday that for the first time allows use of 
those dual ports (and NB 6.5.2) with the T950.  But the only 
use for the dual port is redundancy (no performance 
increase).

I hate to think what would happen if you did what you've 
proposed, as it seems to me that both the master and filer 
might try to access the drive at the same time.

And btw, being lazy and implementing SSO are not mutually 
exclusive.  :-)

-hal

>
> Thanks,
>
> Jamie Jamison
>
>
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