Our datacenters are in the range of "10's of km" and are connected with DWDM (actually, a SONET ring, whatever that is). Our tape drive san is connected by a 2gb channel (ISL link) on this dwdm. It works very well. We did purchase Brocade Extended Fabric feature for the switches on either end to optimize BBCredit buffering for longer distance ISL links. There is a library manager TSM instance at each site to manage the shared library. All TSM servers access both shared libraries/drives. This as worked very well. At one point we did use virtual volumes (using the IP network), but as we grew we caused performance problems for other IP traffic. Being isolated onto a dwdm based FC ISL link has eliminated any performance issues of a shared IP connection.
Rick Thomas Denier <[EMAIL PROTECTED] FFERSONHOSPITAL.O To RG> ADSM-L@VM.MARIST.EDU Sent by: "ADSM: cc Dist Stor Manager" Subject <[EMAIL PROTECTED] Remote tape drives .EDU> 11/04/2008 12:55 PM Please respond to "ADSM: Dist Stor Manager" <[EMAIL PROTECTED] .EDU> My employer is in the early stages of planning for a move to a pair of data centers. We are planning to have a TSM server at each data center, with each server writing copy pool tapes on drives located at the other data center. The TSM servers will run under either mainframe Linux or AIX; we are still looking at the costs of the two options. We have not picked physical locations yet, but our selection criteria will probably lead to a distance between data centers somewhere in the tens of kilometers. I am aware of four options for extending FCP tape drive connections over distances in this range: FCP over dedicated fibre, FCP over shared fibre with wave division multiplexing, iFCP, and FCIP. I gather that there are TSM sites with remote tape drives. Does their experience offer strong reasons to favor or avoid particular options? ----------------------------------------- The information contained in this message is intended only for the personal and confidential use of the recipient(s) named above. If the reader of this message is not the intended recipient or an agent responsible for delivering it to the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that you have received this document in error and that any review, dissemination, distribution, or copying of this message is strictly prohibited. If you have received this communication in error, please notify us immediately, and delete the original message.