NB 6.5.6 Solaris 10 and IBM ultrium 5/lto5 tape drives and multipathing

[Kelly_Stevenson]

We have an IBM 3594 tape library with some dual port LTO5 tape drives. We have them connected to 2 different Brocade switches - so multipathed. The master and media servers are all running Solaris 10u9 and NB 6.5.6.  The Tape library and tape drives are at the latest firmware levels. The multipathed robot via NB seems fine.

We are having issues periodically with the tape drives becoming unavailable and causing PLOGI errors in the servers. We are using the native Solaris st drivers. It seems to be more of a tape drive to server issue - not NB.

Does NB 6.5.6 support us using the IBMTape driver instead of the st drivers?

Has anyone gotten the multipathing ibm lto5 tape drives to work with Solaris 10 and NB 6.5.6 properly ?

Regards

Kelly

[RiaanBadenhorst]

Hi Kelly,

Its not listed in the HCL, Symantec tested it on AIX and HPUX, but I've never seen them say you're not allowed to use the manufacturer's drivers. In windows they actually require it for 64bit.

[Marianne]

According to the Device Config Guide, the st driver is needed. NBU uses a combination of sg and st driver.

Not much info from Symantec regarding tape multipathing - just that is supported as from 6.0:

ftp://exftpp.symantec.com/pub/support/products/NetBackup_Enterprise_Server/303942.pdf

" NetBackup 6.0 became the first release to support multiple paths to tape drives. This was, in part, an enhancement made possible by the new Enterprise Media Manager. The interface was modified as shown to the left so each tape drive could show all tape paths. Each path can be used for a tape drive so that the user has the ability to monitor and control each path in case of a failure. "

[Kelly_Stevenson]

I can't seem to find it in clear black and white if ibmtape on solaris works or not.

Issue is - st on Solaris does not support multipathing, ibmtape does, nb supports multipathing. So st with nb we are having issues. That is why I wanted to try ibmtape on solaris with NB.

So then if ibmtape on solaris with NB does not work, then technically - you cannot do tape drive multipathing with solaris and NB. You can only do it with AIX or HP-UX.

Does that sound right?

[RiaanBadenhorst]

Hi,

Looked around some more and into the guide as per Marianne's post. Seems its not supported.

Found this post, but its not definitive. https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/forums/ibm-tape-drivers-and-solaris-based-netbackup-server

Check with support, or just try it.