11-25-2016 11:22 PM
We have a small site where we are looking to have couple of LTO6 tape drives. Could someone let me know if NetBackup 6.5.6 (i know it's EOL though) can use them for read/write?
If not, then i think we have to go for LTO5 tape drives. Presently we are having LTO4 tape drives.
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11-26-2016 11:24 AM
11-26-2016 11:24 AM
11-26-2016 10:28 PM - edited 11-26-2016 10:29 PM
Hi,
The NetBackup use own logic to understand the hardware. It called density.
NBU-Density
Hardware NBU
LTO1 HCART
LTO2 HCART2
LTO3 HCART3
LTO4 HCART
LTO5 HCART2
LTO6 HCART3
The NBU is application send the data via operating system to destination Storage (Disk/Tape).
If Media server Operating System support hardware then I don't think NBU have any issue with that.
The below mentioned article not 100% match to your query but it give the overview the hcart3 density used in 6.5.x
Article: http://www.veritas.com/docs/000040585
Thanks & Regards,
11-27-2016 01:38 PM
You are partly correct Tousif.
Density in NBU (hcart, hcart2 etc ...) has no technical meaning, it is just a label. The rule is densityX tape will only be allowed in densityX drive. The one exception is qcart which must never be used apart from with 1/4" drives, which I doubt anyone has now. Reason being that for qcart, NBU writes in fixed blocks, which is incompatible with other drives.
Aside of that, the denisty has no special meaning, and will not affect performance or reduce capacity, and any density (apart from qcart) can be used with any drive. If you have a TLD robot, it might not allow for exmple 4mm density as (if I recall correctly) 4mm drives were not available in TLD type robots - I could be wrong on that point though.
This is absolutly correct:
The NBU is application send the data via operating system to destination Storage (Disk/Tape).
This might not be ...
If Media server Operating System support hardware then I don't think NBU have any issue with that.
In theory, an older version NBU 'might' work with a newer drive - updating the device mappings files would be a good start (device mappings file allows NBU to be easily updated with new hardware as it is released).
There could be issues however with 'unsupported drives' - although NBU doesn't write directly to tape (it goes via the OS as you mentioned) we do interact, for example, sending scsi commands, so it's not impossible that some way we 'interact' with older drives is a bit different to what newer drives require.
11-28-2016 07:31 AM
Thanks for taking your time out over the thanksgiving weekend!
You're right that i i have my answer but i thought of verifying and checking over this platform with different backup techs for their views/thoughts/options.
I see these two links where the 2003 OS is not supported for LTO6s but the later OS versions did suppport.
http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21633872
http://content.dell.com/support/home/us/en/04/Drivers/SupportedOS/powervault-lto6
I think we have option to use LTO6s with the higher OS versions.
Thanks Again!