Thank you Prasad and everyone else who responded.

I have taken half of my clients and switched the order for Storage Node 
Affinity.
(I am grateful for "nsradmin -i" for such a task)

Having two paths was set up because the paths are there, so why not have 
some
degree of failover, but seeing how much trouble it is causing, I may end 
up
just assigning the drives to one or the other.

My "load balancing" wasn't meant to sent data to a single drive down two 
paths
like a disk operation, but to balance the drives as a whole between the 
two
available paths in a dynamic way.  I may try to change the order I list 
the drives
in the jukebox config before abandoning the whole idea.  i.e. half the 
drives
would get listed with their path down fibre-channel-A first, the other 
half would
get their path down fibre-channel-B listed first.  It is kind of a shame 
to have a 
data path available and not be able to take advantage of it in the case of 

failure of the other path.

Prasad Chalikonda <prasadchalikonda AT yahoo DOT com> wrote on 05/08/2006 
02:42:09 PM:

> Jim,
> 
> First off, I'd recommend a bit of redesign. Any reason
> you have two 
> paths to each drive? Tape drives don't act like disks.
> Having two paths 
> won't load balance I/O. Additionally, it will cause
> issues.
> 
> After you have configured just 1 path to each tape
> drive, you control 
> which Storage Node a client is backed up to, among
> other things, with 
> what is called - Storage Node Affinity. It is a
> resource in the Client 
> set up. If left at default, that particular client is
> backed up by the 
> NSR Server (Master). To force a client to go to a
> Storage Node, put that 
> name up first, and in case SN fails, it will go to the
> NSR Server.
> 
> 
> HTH
> Prasad.
> 
> Jim Ruskowsky wrote:
> 
> > Hello list
> > 
> > Maybe somebody can offer some advice on the
> following situation.
> > 
> > The setup....
> > 
> > We have 10 tape drives in a single library attached
> to a fibre switch.
> > 
> > We have two networker servers (master and storage
> node) attached to that 
> > same switch - each server has two paths to that same
> switch.
> > 
> > The fabric is configured so that each tape drive can
> be seen on both paths 
> > on each networker server.  We have dynamic drive
> sharing licensed for all 
> > 10 drives.
> > 
> > So for example, drive #0 has four distinct paths
> according to networker
> >         /dev/rmt/0cbn   (master server, first fibre
> channel)
> >         /dev/rmt/10cbn  (master server, second fibre
> channel)
> >         rd=jcnetworker2:/dev/rmt/0cbn   (storage
> node, first fibre 
> > channel)
> >         rd=jcnetworker2:/dev/rmt/10cbn  (storage
> node, second fibre 
> > channel)
> > 
> > The tape pool "DAILY" is set up as default with no
> specific devices 
> > checked off (so all drives should be used)
> > 
> > The problem....
> > 
> > When a savegroup runs, the server only uses the
> drives attached to the 
> > master server - ignoring the existence of the
> storage node.  I ended up 
> > trying to write to 10 LTO3 drives down a single
> fibre channel.  What is 
> > the best way to load balance between all my paths. 
> I've tried 
> > specifically checking off specific paths to devices
> in the tape pool 
> > setup, but then it just picks a path to the master
> server and ignores the 
> > rest.
> > 
> > Thanks for any help.
> > 
> > Jim
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > 
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