Brandon,
We are using IBM LTO Ultrium drives in 2 of our ADIC Scalar 1000 tape
libraries.
But these drives are behind a Storage Network Controller (SNC) rather than
direct fiber attached.
And we're still messing with them in a non-production environment.
The NetWorker server and clients in one case are Win2k sp2
and in the other case all Solaris. All systems are on the SAN (NetWorker
Servers and Storage Nodes).
And in the case of the SUN systems we're using the st drivers rather than
the IBM drivers.
John
-----Original Message-----
From: Helton, Brandon [mailto:bhelton AT HARRIS DOT COM]
Sent: Monday, August 26, 2002 1:47 PM
To: NETWORKER AT LISTMAIL.TEMPLE DOT EDU
Subject: [Networker] SUN and Legato compatability with FC LTO tape
drives
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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