When AIX scans the SCSI bus (sometimes it is fiber) it will see the next
port first, then continue in port order until the end the start at port
0 and finish the scan.
If you have your servers in ports 0-4 and your tape drives in the other
ports they should show up in the same order each time.
The same principle applies to tape drives on ISLed switches.

Andy Huebner

-----Original Message-----
From: ADSM: Dist Stor Manager [mailto:ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU] On Behalf Of
David E Ehresman
Sent: Wednesday, March 01, 2006 2:11 PM
To: ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU
Subject: [ADSM-L] Fiber attached tape drives

I have fiber attached 3590 tape drives in a 3494 library. I am running
TSM 5.3.2.0 on AIX 5.2 ML6.  The WWN and Serial number of the drive is
stored in the TSM DRIVE definition. The AIX device name (/dev/rmt?) is
stored in the PATH definition.

I am also running TSM StorageAgent on three other AIX boxes so TSM also
has PATH statements connecting a drive to the appropriate rmt device on
each of the storageagent boxes.  Since the serial/wwn is at the drive
level and the device name is at the path level, the drives have to be
assigned in the same device name order on each of the boxes.  I don't
know of a easy way to do that.  The only way I know to do that is to
zone one drive at a time to each box and do cfgmgr inbetween each so I
can control which drive gets which rmt.  This is a major pain.  Is there
an easier/better way to force the drive mapping to be the same across
multiple AIX machines?

David


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