David Stes wrote:

Brendan,

In practice the IBMtape and lin_tape drivers work fine,
and in fact, our users report that driver works better than Linux st,
although that IBM says the drives work with both st and lin_tape

George

We have had users with LTO-1,2,3 and have fibre channel (SAN) users with LTO-4
(with Brocade switch in mixed Solaris/Linux/AlphaStor setup with Linux)
 and IBM tape and lin_tape works fine, with up to 160 MB/s per LTO-4 drive.

Over the last few years (2002-2008), I've opened several cases with Legato
and EMC to see under what circumstances tapes would be overwritten.

The response that I got from EMC was that it was a documentation error, which was the result of a certain case, where IBM actually provided a fix.

I've requested the case details where the 'overwritten' errors happened,

and they were never provided. I've asked for IBM LTO firmware and switch revision and HBA details, and

driver version that would have that bug;  but I've never seen it.

In the end, I got a statement from EMC that they cannot guarantuee that
tapes cannot be overwritten by the IBMtape driver, but that nobody has
been reporting any errors like that, and that they would change the footnote,
because that they believed that in practice IBMtape worked better than st.

Regards,
DAvid
---

Date:    Fri, 10 Oct 2008 09:15:05 +1100
From:    Brendan Sandes <brendannetworker AT GMAIL DOT COM>
Subject: Re: LTO tape drives on Linux

Hi Davina.

One last piece of advice.  Check the NetWorker Hardware compatibility guide.
 As of a few months ago there was a footnote statement to the effect that
IBM tape drivers were NOT supported on Linux.  Under certain circumstatnces
may even cause tapes to be overwritten.

Cheers!

Brendan Sandes

On Fri, Sep 5, 2008 at 3:46 AM, Davina Treiber
<Davina.Treiber AT peevro.co DOT uk>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.

How well does persistent binding/naming work with the Linux version of the
IBMtape driver?

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

What are your experiences with LTO tapes on Linux?

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------------------------------

Date:    Thu, 9 Oct 2008 18:15:14 -0400
From:    brerrabbit <networker-forum AT BACKUPCENTRAL DOT COM>
Subject: Cloning from VTL to Tape

JesseGill wrote:

<snip>

 Is there a way to clone an entire pool at once? What would be the best way to 
do this?

If there's any other information I need to include, please let me know. Thanks 
in adnvance!

Jesse

You can clone by volume name, volume id, or (like we do) by saveset. If you want to clone more than one thing at a time, you need to get what you want into a file, and pass the file name to the nsrclone executable. In our case, we use an mminfo command to populate a text file with all of the saveset numbers we intend to clone and then reference that file with the -f option using nsrclone. By using mminfo, you can craft a query to return just the items, be it volume names or savesets, that need to be cloned on to tape. Our script uses an mminfo query that looks for savesets that only have one copy (i.e. no clone copy already exists), and I'm guessing that you could craft something that achieves the same for volumes.

HTH
-brerrabbit

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Date:    Thu, 9 Oct 2008 21:15:25 -0400
From:    "Landwehr, Jerome" <jlandweh AT HARRIS DOT COM>
Subject: Re: Cloning from VTL to Tape

Well, generally there's two ways to do cloning. The first is as a save group, you flip a flag to clone at group completion. The only other option

IMO is by listing the savesets into a file and using nsrclone commands.

The issue I've had with cloning is it inevitably fails at some point, leaving you to cleanup the mess and try again!

HTH
Jerry

On Oct 9, 2008, at 12:53 PM, "JesseGill" <networker-forum AT BACKUPCENTRAL DOT COM > wrote:

Hey all, I looked through the forum and couldn't really find anything on this, but I hope I'm not revisiting an old topic.

I'm a new backup admin for Directv and need a little help. In our datacenter, we have two Networker servers, bkupcr1 and bkupcr2, both running Networker 7.3.2 on RedHat Linux 4.3 32-bit. Bkupcr1 is the nsrhost with an attached ADIC Scalar 24 tape drive, while bkupcr2 is a storage node with an attached Clariion Disk Library.

Each night, data is backed up to the CDL. There are three pools (INDEX, SERVERS, and FS) on the CDL. Indexes go to the INDEX pool, bkupcr1-2 filesystems and MMC database go to SERVERS, and all other client filesystems go to FS. What I want to do is have that data cloned to a clone pool on tape. Maybe not every day, but at least once a week.

I've tested the following command:

# nsrclone -s bkupcr1 -b 'CDL Clone' VT0025

This clones a volume on the CDL to a Clone pool on tape. This test was successful. Is there a way to clone an entire pool at once? What would be the best way to do this?

If there's any other information I need to include, please let me know. Thanks in adnvance!

Jesse

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------------------------------

Date:    Thu, 9 Oct 2008 22:09:13 -0400
From:    brerrabbit <networker-forum AT BACKUPCENTRAL DOT COM>
Subject: Cloning from VTL to Tape

Landwehr, Jerome wrote:

Well, generally there's two ways to do cloning. The first is as a save group, you flip a flag to clone at group completion. The only other option

IMO is by listing the savesets into a file and using nsrclone commands.

The issue I've had with cloning is it inevitably fails at some point, leaving you to cleanup the mess and try again!

HTH
Jerry

On Oct 9, 2008, at 12:53 PM, "JesseGill" <networker-forum < at > BACKUPCENTRAL.COM

Jerry, if your clones inevitably fail then there's something else broken in 
your system.  We're running 7.3.3 in a Windows-only environment, and I've got 
eight clone jobs running from four VTL's to a single tape library every day.   
We might have something weird happen to a single clone job once every six 
months.  We've had SAN connectivity issues from time to time that would 
preclude a clone job from running, but once the connectivity is working 
correctly, the clones just flat work.  Can you elaborate on the issues you're 
encountering and your environment?

-brerrabbit

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