Hi,
I am two summaries behind, I promise to catch up. This is the last
item on my immediate agenda.
We are a Legato shop, and I am one of the back up boys. We just got in
a seven drive TL895 auto-changing 96-slot backup robot with 7 DLT 7000
drives. I need to get that thing hooked up and working. I am retiring
a TL891 autochanger with two drives replacing it for a TL895 autochanger
with seven drives. On the back panel of this TL895 robot are 4 SCSI
connections. These connections are used to connect the tape drives to
the backup server or the tape drives to a cross roads data router for
fibre operation.
Our data center will be reconfigured for gigabit switching later this
summer and we will rework our UNIX Nic. cards for 1000baseT operations
at that time; but right now our backups happen over TCP/IP in a 100baseT
switched ethernet environment. We looked long and hard at storage area
networks and we may go there some day but right now we think we can get
more bang for our backup buck by backing up in a 1000baseT switched
ethernet environment. Check this out: We had one client-server running
at 10baseT and it took ten hours to back up. We switched that
client-server to 100baseT and we could back it up in one hour. When we
switch that same server to 1000baseT we think we will see six minute
backups. Well, we back up a lot of servers so six minutes here and six
minutes there will cost justify the purchase of a fairly large
integrated chassis switch solution from Cisco, Enterasys, or whomever.
Plus we get to hook up the DataCenter to the campus backbone with a
gigabit uplink. That's way cooler than storage area networks and our
gigabit switched DataCenter can still go down the SANs road some day at
a later date too. Everything we have is SANS convertible, the EMC
storage solution, our UNIX boxes and even the TL985 autochanger.
My backup server is running Tru64 UNIX 4.0e, I will need to pull out
three ethernet cards and stick in two KZPBA-CB SCSI cards and one 4-port
DE504-BA 10/100 ethernet card. These new cards quite possibly may be in
a used condition. I don't know from whence they came or what level of
the os was running when they were last installed. What I do know is, I
know where I got them from and they are under warranty from the
re-seller, so I am not worried about them if they don't work, I'll get
new ones. Anyway I am going to have these cards professionally
installed via my Compaq hardware service representative. The hardware
installation is taken care of. Hopefully he will know if they are good
or bad at the time of the installation.
I may even blow away the TL891 robot configuration and then
re-configure the new autochanger myself. Ta da! Actually I may call
Legato support for this, but I'm not worried about it. That's the last
thing on my list of things to worry about.
What I am worried about is: What do I have to do to make the UNIX
operating system discover these new cards? We normally call in the good
Dr., a local Compaq Tru64 UNIX guru to assist us on a Compaq personal
services contract, but before I plan for that I would like some better
idea of just what exactly will be involved with the configuration of
these new cards on the software side. Will my software guru have to
flash any ROMS either in the new/used cards or in any of the seven (7)
DLT-7000 drives? Will he have to make any devices, etc. etc. etc. And
of course the Nic. card has to be configured with at least two IP
addresses and forced to run at 100baseT full-duplex. I'm actually
running at 100baseT half-duplex on the NIC cards in the backup sever
with no problems currently but that's because somebody told me a back up
server will have better response at half-duplex but another person said
in a switch environment to eliminate network collisions completely use
full-duplex. Who's right here? I'm half-duplex now with no problems
and good performance but would like to use the proper duplex setting. I
may try to configure all these things myself. Is this major or minor or
should I call in the good Doctor for some extra training? :)
New Parts
=============================
(2) KZPBA-CB SCSI Cards
(1) DE504-BA (4) Port Ethernet Card 10/100baseT
TL895 Auto Changer
SCSI Connections Tape Drives
=============== ==============
zero ----------------------- robot control and for drives 1 and 2
one ----------------------- for drives 3 and 4
two ------------------------for drives 5 and 6
three ----------------------- for drive 7
We have one 4100s series alpha server which will be connected to the
TL895 autochanger. This alpha box has has five pci slots, actually
seven expansion slots but one slot is being used by the graphics card
and another by the storage tray.
Existing
PCI Slots Purpose
========
====================================================================
one KZPBA-CB SCSI connecition to our EMC Storage
solution Y-cable-to-2-scsi-connectors
two single port ethernet card it is being used (***
Retired ***)
three being used to connect the storage tray its empty we
boot from EMC disk
four KZPBA-CB SCSI connection to our existing TL891
autochanger Y-cable-to-2-scsi-connectors
five single port ethernet card it is being used (***
Retired ***)
six single port ethernet card not being used (***
Retired ***
seven graphics card probably an ELSA graphics adapter
Proposed
PCI Slots Purpose
========
===================================================================
one KZPBA-CB SCSI connection to our EMC Storage solution
Y-cable-to-2-scsi-connectors
two Quad Port Ethernet card 10/100 baseT (*** New ***)
three being used to connect the storage tray its empty we
boot from EMC disk
four KZPBA-CB SCSI connection to our new TL985
Y-cable-to-2-scsi-connectors drives 5, 6, 7.
five KZPBA-CB SCSI connection to our new TL985 drives 3
and 4 (*** New ***)
six KZPBA-CB SCSI connection to our new TL985 drives 1
and 2 (*** New ***)
seven graphics card proably an ELSA graphics adapter
Received on Tue Apr 24 2001 - 23:11:39 NZST