BE 20 question

[Shahin]

Hi,

Cuurently we have a BE 15 and a Tape library LTO 5. The BE 15 is installed on a server 2008 R2.

We have are going to buy a new library with LTO 8 drive and move to BE 20. we want to keep the old library for sometimes online.

Can I connect the new library to a new server, install the BE 20 on the new server and install the agent of BE 20 on the old BE 15 server? so I can use the BE 15 to read my old LTO 5 tapes and backup  data on BE 15 server to BE 20?

[Larry_Fine]

No, the Remote Agent on the BE 15 Win 2008 server would NOT be able to access the LTO5 tape library.

I see two obvious choices for you:

1) connect the LTO5 library to your new BE 20 server, in addition to your new LTO8 library.  The LTO8 would be your regular library and the LTO5 would generally be considered "read only".  If the LTO5 library is SAS, this should be easy.  If it is old parallel SCSI, it gets trickier and likely unsupported with BE 20, but it should work.

2) make the new BE 20 server with the LTO8 library a BE CAS server.  Make the old server with the LTO5 library a BE MMS server, but this would require it to be also running BE 20.  Versatile, but requires more BE licenses.

[Shahin]

Hi Lary,

Is there any document on how to connect 2 devices to a single server with BE 20?

By read the LTO 5 you mean we are able to resotre data if is needed from LTO 5 as well?

Thanks

[Larry_Fine]

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@Shahin wrote:

Is there any document on how to connect 2 devices to a single server with BE 20?

By read the LTO 5 you mean we are able to resotre data if is needed from LTO 5 as well?

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No, there is no document.  But it bascially is as simple as hooking both devices up.  It is really just a question of having the HBA's & ports on your server to connect things to.  A SAS fan-out cable lets you connect multiple devices to one port on the host server.

Yes, if the LTO5 library is connected to the BE 20 server, you would be able to restore from LTO5 tapes.  If you are able to migrate the BE catalogs and upgrade them, then you are in great shape.  But if you cannot migrate the BE catalogs, then you would need to inventory and catalog a tape before you can restore it.

EDIT: to clarify, your new BE 20 server can Read AND Write LTO5 tapes in an LTO5 library.  Most LTO5 libraries are still supported by BE 20, but check the BE HCL to confirm if your brand and model is is still supported.  If it is a SAS library, it probably still works, even if not officially supported by BE and your library manufacturer.

[Shahin]

Hi Lary,

Thank you for you reply I really appreciate it.

With migrating the BE catalogs to the new server you mean we should first move the BE 15 DB from old server to new one install the BE 15 and upgrade the BE 15 to BE 20? or just moving the  BE 15  .xml and .fh files to the new server after installing the BE 20 is enough?

writing to the LTO 5 is not importent anymore but restoring backup from LTO 5 is very importent to us.

Thanks

[Larry_Fine · Accepted solution]

I am no migration or upgrade expert, so I would follow whatever best practices for migrating or upgrading articles you find.  Here is a start  https://www.veritas.com/support/en_US/article.100001807

The huge advantage of migrating the catalogs is that it will make restoring your LTO5 tapes so much simpler.