FC Tape drive connected to FC switch

[#1]

Dear All,

we recently purchased a new FAS 2040c and a IBM TS3100 with two LTO5 drives. Sadly the 2040c only has 2 FC Ports on each filer. A shame compared to our good old 3020c where we had 4.

Today I was wondering if it is possible to attach the LTO drives to our FC switch and make them visible/accessible to the filers via zoning? At the moment I configured 0a as Initiatior Port and directly attached one LTO5 to each filer. Doing so, I have no real redundancy. I can only attach to one FC Switch. If something bad happens to the switch we can no longer access the data. Bad thing.

Is it possible to attach the FC tape drives to the FC switch and zone them to the netapp filer?

[#2]

Yes.  This is supported.  Here is the OSN link http://www.netapp.com/us/technology/osn/osn.html

[#3]

Thanks for the link. So all I have to do is create the zoning and the netapp will pickup the tape drive / media changer just as it would be directly attached? Or do I need to map the WWNN / WWPN in the /etc/rc file?

Best Regards,

[#4]

No explicit configuration on NetApp side is required. You may need to configure library to allow access from NetApp though.

[#5]

Best practice is a zone per initiator port.. So 2 zones in yur example.

Typos Sent on Blackberry Wireless

[#6]

Hi,

Just to confirm I have two FC ports on the 2040c

0a is configured as initiator

0b is configured as target

We have two FC Fabrics FabA and FabB. What I would like to achieve is to connect 0a to FabA and 0b to FabB. To do this I have to reconfigure 0a as a target port. But If I do this I can no longer access the Tape Drive that is now connected to the switch?

If I get this right only a target port can connect to the tape drive?

Regards,

Oliver

[#7]

Tape drives connect via fc initiator ports.

Typos Sent on Blackberry Wireless

[#8]

Thought so. I guess we have to reconfigure the systems with two FC cards and connect them to both Fabs.