We are using STK 9840 tape drives, also in "native" STK mode.
I don't use the OST drivers, I use ADSM's built-in ECART drivers (at some
point in V3, I don't remember where, ADSM started providing direct support
for 9840's).
I ran the 9840's starting at ADSM V3.1.2.42; we are now TSM 3.7.2, AIX
4.3.2, ACSLS 5.3.2 (although using ACSLS doesn't change which device drivers
you use, it only affects how commands to the robot are handled.)
If you run cfgmgr before you create the ADSM devices, AIX will see the
drives and create rmtx names for them with the OST drivers. You can leave
those alone, or delete them.
Then start SMIT, devices, ADSM Devices, add a tape drive. Point to the
address of your 9840 drive, and let smit add an ADSM scsi tape drive. It
will create a device special file named mtx (instead of Rmtx). Now you may
have both an rmtx and an mtx definition for the same device, but that's OK
(just don't try to have AIX use the drives while ADSM is using them.)
Here is the lsdev:
rmt1 Available 10-78-00-2,0 Other SCSI Tape Drive
rmt2 Available 10-78-00-3,0 Other SCSI Tape Drive
rmt3 Available 20-60-00-0,0 Other SCSI Tape Drive
rmt4 Available 20-60-00-1,0 Other SCSI Tape Drive
mt0 Available 20-60-00-0,0 Tivoli Storage Manager Tape Drive
mt1 Available 20-60-00-1,0 Tivoli Storage Manager Tape Drive
mt2 Available 10-78-00-2,0 Tivoli Storage Manager Tape Drive
mt3 Available 10-78-00-3,0 Tivoli Storage Manager Tape Drive
I have 4 9840's; as you can see from the device addresses, each has TWO
definitions, one using the AIX OST driver, the other using the ADSM (TSM)
driver.
Here are the definitions from my devconfig file:
/* Device Configuration */
DEFINE DEVCLASS STK9840 DEVTYPE=ECART FORMAT=9840C MOUNTLIMIT=DRIVES
MOUNTWAIT=60 MOUNTRETENTION=0 PREFIX=ADSM LIBRARY=STKLIB
DEFINE LIBRARY STKLIB LIBTYPE=ACSLS ACSID=0
DEFINE DRIVE STKLIB STK1MT0 DEVICE=/dev/mt0 ACSDRVID=0,0,2,0 ONLINE=Yes
DEFINE DRIVE STKLIB STK2MT1 DEVICE=/dev/mt1 ACSDRVID=0,0,2,1 ONLINE=Yes
DEFINE DRIVE STKLIB STK3MT2 DEVICE=/dev/mt2 ACSDRVID=0,0,2,2 ONLINE=Yes
DEFINE DRIVE STKLIB STK4MT3 DEVICE=/dev/mt3 ACSDRVID=0,0,2,3 ONLINE=Yes
The ACSDRVID parm is required for us because we are driving the library with
ACSLS software, and doesn't apply to you. But the DEVCLASS definition is
where you specify ECART and FORMAT=9840 or 9840C, that should work for you.
Hope that helps...
************************************************************************
Wanda Prather
The Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab
443-778-8769
wanda_prather AT jhuapl DOT edu
"Intelligence has much less practical application than you'd think" -
Scott Adams/Dilbert
************************************************************************
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Snyder.John [SMTP:Snyder.John AT CANADATRUST DOT COM]
> Sent: Wednesday, August 30, 2000 9:19 AM
> To: ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU
> Subject: STK tape drives
>
> I've used STK 9840 and 9490 drives under AIX and on Pyramid systems, with
> good
> success. This was NOT using *SM, though...it was using two other backup
> software products.
>
> I think there is a (microcode-controlled) option in both the 9840 and
> 9490's
> to operate in "native" (STK) mode or IBM emulation mode. We always used
> STK
> mode, therefore atape drivers were not used...we used the IBM OST (Other
> SCSI
> Tape) drivers under AIX. We also used the drivers produced by Gresham
> (formerly Open Microsystems) located at
> http://www.greshamstorage.com/products/advan.html
>
> Their Advantape drivers were well supported (with a nice trace facility),
> and
> provided a significant (100%) performance improvement on Pyramid (but only
> marginal improvement on AIX 4.3.2)....they might be worth a look...they
> did
> well for us.
>
> Although the increased data transfer rate was nice on the 9840's, the
> biggest
> gain was mount time....a 64 gig database backup that formerly took 80 9490
> tapes (and 5 hours) lost about an hour (20%) waiting for tape mounts.
> Same
> backup on 9840's used 2 tapes and 2 mounts..... so we had a 20%
> improvement
> via tape mount elimination alone.
>
> One "secret" we found with ultra-scsi cards (pci cards in both Silver
> nodes and
> Winterhawk II nodes): These cards have an internal scsi cable connection
> plus
> an external cable connection. Smitty/dev/scsi adaptors/change allows you
> to
> set ultra-scsi speed for the external connector ....this defaults to
> "disable"
> (the assumption is that if we're using external cables, then we might not
> meet
> ultra-scsi requirements). You must set this manually to ENABLE, else you
> do
> not achieve ultra-scsi speed. Until we discovered this, our benchmarks
> with
> 9840's were quite disappointing! This also applies to our 3590 drive
> connections.
>
> BTW: if anyone can recommend optimum settings for other options for these
> cards
> (eg: Number of DMA bursts per PCI bus ownership, DMA bus memory length,
> Target
> mode bus memory length), I'd be interested to hear them. Both of my tape
> drive
> vendors have responded with "huh?" when asked for their recommendations!
>
> Similarly: does anyone have recommendations re daisy-chaining two
> ultra-scsi
> drives on one card? Will 3590 "B's" or "E's" perform ok if we put two on
> each
> ultra-scsi card?
>
> hope this helps....JRS.
|
