Sharing Robot with TSM?

[juggernaut1]

have any of you had any experience in TSM migrations where you have to share the robot?  The libray can be partitioned, single fibre connection from robot to san. Can you use two apps to share the robot i.e. TSM and Netbackup.  If so are there specific configurations that need to be in place?  If both software accesses the robotic arm at the same time  will or does that cause any type of conflict or is all that handled at the library?

Thanks,

[Chris_Morris]

I wouldn't recommend sharing a robot across 2 applications at the same time.  You may be able to have success with something like that if while one application is running, the other's services are all stopped.

I would assume that you'd get a lot of errors about a drive being used by another application as NetBackup or TSM have allocations for drives.  You could also run into port conflicts.

I wouldn't recommend this for a live production environment.  But it would be interesting to see it tested.  Though I know admins who have tried to run NetBackup and Backup Exec and had a laundry list of problems due to both applications running at the same time and sharing resources.

Then again, if you partition the robot in such a way that TSM can only see 1 partition, and NetBackup can only see the other, you might be able to get away with that.  But I could still foresee problems with the sharing of the robotic arm, and if you have to share drives at all.

[juggernaut1]

Yeah there will be no sharing of the drives or slots...  2 full partitions as this is a migration.. the end result being all on NBU.

[Chris_Morris]

Well, if TSM can't see what NetBackup has configured and vice versa, you should be fine.  I would just make sure you have a contingency plan for your production environment.  If something goes wrong, it could get ugly.

I'd be interested to know how everything went once the migration is complete.  Keep me updated if you feel like it.  ;)

[J_H_Is_gone]

You create 2 virtual libraries in your robot.  Zone some tape drives to TSM server and some to NB server.

One to NB one to TSM,  each is assigned tape drives and given their own tapes.

The thing is that you will be assigning some tapes to TSM and some tapes to NB  - and they will never cross.

So you have to watch your number of scratch tapes in each software.

Should that is what a virtual library is all about 

[juggernaut1]

So there will not be any conflict on the robot?  A question came up if both apps were to access the robot at the same time, would there by any type of fibre conflict.  Appears to be a single fibre connection from library to san.  In theory it should work , it may take more time to  move media in/out of tape drives but it should work.  I can't find any config documentation supporting this though.

[J_H_Is_gone]

you would have to be looking in the doc's for your robot about using more than one virtual library and how that works.

[juggernaut1]

Ok I agree, having cu open up a vendore case for verification.  I thought it was at the device level all along.