I'm sorry if this is not directly related to a Legato problem/question, but tape
drive issues are of concern for all Legato admins.
My company is trying to move toward Fibre Channel LTO tape drives (for various
jukeboxes, but mostly StorageTek L700). Without delving into the politics, we
are having issues with getting SUN to supply use drives that they will support
under our current support contract. Our SUN sales rep is siting the following
as to why SUN will not sell us (and support) FC LTO drives at this time.
Right now IBM is the only company that sells the FC LTO drives, with plans for
Seagate in September, and HP in December. Sun has found a problem with the error
recovery mechanism and how this drive handles it. While time to market is always
a critical issue, it is equally imperative that we ship a product that delivers
on the promise of reliability and quality for our customers.
There *will* be a FC LTO drive on our price list in early Q2 (October time
frame). We will get details on part numbers, prices, and technical details
several weeks before the announcement. As soon as I get this info I will pass it
along to you. I will also keep you updated on any changes as we are notified.
There have been references that the current FC drives only support fibre channel
arbitrated loop (fc-al), not fabric. This has been a concern for Harris now that
you are implementing switches into your SAN.
Summary:
The test data with the only LTO FC drive on the market today (IBM) reveals an
issue that our customers need to be aware of. The issue revolves around error
recovery, specifically:
FCP-2 Error Recovery
FCP-2 allows the drive to recover from low level errors, and test data shows
issues with the IBM LTO FC drive that are yet to be resolved. In short, FCP-2
error recovery allows the drive to resubmit the data frame instantly. If the
data is accepted the back up continues. If the problem remains the drive will
show the issue (error) as soon as it happens. Without FCP-2 error recovery
(which the IBM LTO FC drive struggles with), the backup will either abort
instantly or will indicate at the end of the backup that there was a problem.
Note: The latest code in use on the IBM LTO FC is B22U0. Sun is working closely
with StorageTek and IBM to get this resolved.
IBM: Shipping now (but with error recovery issues discussed above)
Seagate: Schedule to ship in October
HP: Scheduled to ship in December
Has anyone had any experience with SUN/Solaris based Legato servers with FC LTO
drives (the jukebox is farily irrelevant to me).
Thanks,
Brandon
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