CISCO UCS and 3584 Tape Library

[rallingham]

I have a customer that has a blade server and they are using CISCO UCS HBA, I think they are virtual. They are getting errors when they try to attach a 3584 tape library. I suspect this is not supported but I can find little documentation. Has anyone else tried this?
One other item is that there is no utility that allows them to set persistence to the tape drives. The windows procedure for this is a pain.

 

[moon-buddy]

Have they dedicated the FC to the 3584?

In UCS Blade setup, you can dedicate the FC for any application.

 

[rallingham]

Thanks I will have to check and see.

 

[rallingham]

Here is the reply from the customer. I assume it is not zoning that we are talking about.

"By dedicated do they mean zoning? If not then what exactly? The HBAs on that server are only for that server and the ports are dedicated to the TSM server.

As far as dedicating FC for an application in UCS, the UCS admin here hasn’t heard of anything like that. I also looked at the config and I don’t see anywhere to dedicate it to an application."

 

[moon-buddy]

By dedicating, I mean that specific FC/FCs should be assigned to just the blade server (on that UCS chassis) running the TSM server.

The FC should not be shared. I have UCS blades and Cisco can dedicate FC to just one blade.

 

[rallingham]

Agreed on the sharing issue. This customer used to share between disk and tape and I would tell them it was not supported and that data integrity was at risk.
In any case they say the HBAs are only for this TSM server. I will check on the sharing issue. Thanks for getting back to me.

 

[rallingham]

Just to update this issue, the problem is with the blade and support for HBAs. Only two ports are supported and they have 8 ports. On to a different TSM server.