Is fiber connection to server needed?

[em23]

Hey all, I currently have an SL500 (and the tape drives) directly connected to my backup server. I know the tape drives need the direct connection, but I was wondering if the SL500 needs the direct fiber to the backup server or can this be placed on a switch?

Thanks,
em

[zippy]

 it can be put in a switch and zoned to the tape drive 

[Sriram]

It basically depends how far your tape library is from the backup server to decide upon whether to have a switch.

[em23]

they are next to each other. i would say cable lenght wise, about 3ft.

[Sriram]

I don't see a need to have switch in that case.

[em23]

Well, the server only has 3 pci slots and we need to use the HBA's on that server so they want to move the SL500 off of the server and place it on to a switch.

[Sriram]

i was wrong you need to use switch any ways.

[em23]

hehehe...thanks for your reply guys.

[Rakesh_Khandelw]

IF your drives and server's HBAs are connected through switch, you can configured multiple devices on each HBA port (unless you have already attached your drives in loop in tape library)
You can easily share the tape drives between media servers (SSO)
If a cable goed bad on library side, you will impact only one drive instead of multiple in that loop.

The downside to it -- switches are expensive :(



 

[Sriram]

If you use switch then you can zone them to the servers for optimum utilization and using SSO you can share all the drives to media servers by keeping one robotic control host.

[em23]

Is there any documentation on how to do the setup and configuration?