On Thursday 04 September 2008, Davina Treiber wrote:
> This is a question to those of you using Linux machines as a server or
> storage node.
>
> What is the best choice of driver to use when connecting IBM LTO tape
> drives to a Linux server? Is it best to install the IBMtape drivers, or
> stick with the native st drivers.

Hi Davina,

You should be fine with a pretty recent native driver

> If using the native st driver, is it necessary to customise stinit.def?
> Does it in fact run stinit at the right time?

To use the right block sizes you should really set up an stinit.def entry 
_and_ make sure that stinit is run at boot time before any access to the 
drive, ie. before networker is started, otherwise you will use a fixed 
blocksize of 512 bytes (or 1024 on some distis).

On FC a block size mismatch will not be very visible, but if you really start 
to push the speed up, you will see a definitive improvement in speed. 
(Smaller blocks means more interrupts as you get one per block; As an 
interrupt is _very_ expensive in terms of CPU processing, any saves here will 
show up quite well)

> What are your experiences with LTO tapes on Linux?

A no problem setup.

Best
Dag

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