Ben, I have heard it's not about the amount of data but the type of adapters you are using. I think recent Emulex FC adapters can mix tape/disk data but for instance Qlogic FC adapters don't do so well mixing tape and disk.
I guess if you want multi path failover to you tape drives (some devices support this) you need 4 HBA's if you want to split the disk/tape data. That's a hefty amount of money and if I were you I would read into it. Stefan -----Original Message----- From: ADSM: Dist Stor Manager [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Ben Bullock Sent: woensdag 8 maart 2006 0:42 To: ADSM-L@VM.MARIST.EDU Subject: Re: [ADSM-L] LAN FREE Backup Thanks for the input. It sounds like the "separate adapters" is a good idea. It would probably depend on how large or how busy your TSM server is before you start to see these stream VS block issues. Thanks, Ben -----Original Message----- From: ADSM: Dist Stor Manager [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Nast, Jeff P. Sent: Tuesday, March 07, 2006 3:48 PM To: ADSM-L@VM.MARIST.EDU Subject: Re: LAN FREE Backup Hi Ben, I was remotely involved with this sort of problem about a year ago. Another hospital in the area had a host machine that was using a FASTt700 and FC tape over the same HBAs. They had lots of problems both from the disk and tape point of view and the CE was replacing parts left and right to no avail. As soon as I heard of their problem I told the CE to have them move the disk and tape to separate HBAs. But their VAR said no way is that the problem. So the hospital suffered for another 5 months until they finally tried it and things worked fine after that. With the most HBA drivers comes a read.me file that states: 1.2 Limitations --------------- Inter-operability with tape devices is supported on separate FC HBA and FC switch zones... Someone may correct me here, but if memory serves... the tape devices were put on streaming (selector) channels and disk on block channels. Some tape operations can use very long sustained continous data streams, thus not allowing access to the channel by other devices on the same channel. A problem for timing sensitive disk. Block devices on the hand have smaller "blocks" of data on the channel and allow other devices more chances to access the channel. I have heard of tape and disk coexisting on one HBA and working, but it is not recommended nor supported by IBM. Your mileage may vary... -Jeff SMDC http://www.smdc.org -----Original Message----- From: ADSM: Dist Stor Manager [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Ben Bullock Sent: Tuesday, March 07, 2006 15:15 To: ADSM-L@VM.MARIST.EDU Subject: Re: LAN FREE Backup That brings up a question. I know if the past, we were told not to mix DISK and TAPE resources on the same FC HBA, but is that suggestion still valid? Will it not work at all? Or will it work but extremely poorly because of the different types of data flows? Just curious if something has changed in the last few years of FC architecture that makes this rule-of-thumb no longer apply... Ben -----Original Message----- From: ADSM: Dist Stor Manager [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Rubie Lim Sent: Tuesday, March 07, 2006 2:09 PM To: ADSM-L@VM.MARIST.EDU Subject: Re: LAN FREE Backup Thanks. I have 3 clients to put on LAN FREE backup, but 2 of them cannot have more than 2 HBA's, what route should I go? And these 2 HBA's is needed for disk for redundancy. Rubie -----Original Message----- From: ADSM: Dist Stor Manager [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Nast, Jeff P. Sent: Tuesday, March 07, 2006 10:24 AM To: ADSM-L@VM.MARIST.EDU Subject: Re: [ADSM-L] LAN FREE Backup Yes, you need to zone tape drives to the machine running Storage Manager. Multiple tape drives can use the same HBA. Tape and Disk cannot coincide on the same HBA. You need a separate adapters for disk and tape. This stems from the days of S360 (and earlier?) where there were seperate channels for streaming channels (tape) and block channels (disk). Guess this dates me... -Jeff "old timer" Nast -----Original Message----- From: ADSM: Dist Stor Manager [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Rubie Lim Sent: Tuesday, March 07, 2006 10:01 To: ADSM-L@VM.MARIST.EDU Subject: LAN FREE Backup I am trying to implement a LAN FREE backup, and my question on the Storage Agent/Client, do I need to create a zone from one of my HBA to the Fiber Channel Tape drives? And if I can share the HBA with disk and tape? Any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks, Rubie This e-mail communication and any attachments may contain confidential and privileged information for the use of the designated recipients named above. If you are not the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that you have received this communication in error and that any review, disclosure, dissemination, distribution or copying of it or its contents is prohibited. As required by federal and state laws, you need to hold this information as privileged and confidential. If you have received this communication in error, please notify the sender and destroy all copies of this communication and any attachments.
