Lto-5 Native Attach Drives; Interaction Of Physical Cabling And Library Configuration Options; Attaching Drives To Fc I/O Blades - Quantum Scalar i6000 Installation Manual

LTO-5 Native Attach Drives

LTO-5 native attach drives are similar to Storage Networking drives because they are automatically
accompanied by an EEB. The EEB is NOT a drive data path connection point. Native attach drives differ
from Storage Networking drives because they do not have a Storage Networking License to enable the
Storage Networking feature set. An LTO-5 native attach drive still allows the drive to become a "bridge" for
the library control path to reach the customer SAN or hosts.
• Drive Data Path Physical Connection – connect the primary drive data cable to the customer SAN
or host.
• Library Control Path Physical Connection – the drive data cable becomes the physical connection
for a library control path. Part of setting up a partition is to designate the control path drive for that
partition.

Interaction of Physical Cabling and Library Configuration Options

• The maximum hosts mapped to a single FC I/O blade is 64 per port. This same limitation applies to
the data port of a Storage Networking LTO-5 drive.
• The FC I/O blades have active channel zoning that can affect which hosts have access to which
drives. Ensure that you define your channel zoning to match the physical cabling of the drives.
• When cabling drives, ensure that they are cabled to the correct hosts for the defined partitions. The
physical cabling must allow connection of desired hosts to desired library partition(s) and drives.
• LTO-5 drives should never be connected to both a FC I/O blade and an EEB. Certain library
features can work over either physical connection, but do not work properly if both connections are
present.
• LTO-5 drives connected to FC I/O blades are limited to a 4 Gbps connection speed because the FC
I/O blade is a 4 Gbps device.

Attaching Drives to FC I/O Blades

The FC I/O blades support connections to LTO-1, LTO-2, LTO-3, LTO-4, LTO-5,. DLT-S4, and SDLT-600
drives.
Libraries that have control management blade (CMB) in the I/O management unit support connection to the
drives and library controller through FC I/O blades. The hosts communicate with the drives via the FC I/O
blades. The drives are represented by their own unique FC_LUN ID assigned by its respective I/O blade
(data path).
Although direct host connection to the MCB is possible, communication through the library partition to I/O
blade fibre ports is the recommended standard practice unless special requirements exist. Each library
partition will have a respective LUN ID mapped to a user selectable FC I/O blade port.The library partition
LUN is mapped to a host port on the same FC I/O blade to which the partition's drives are connected. Host
connectivity. Direct attached LTO-5 drives can be configured using control path and SNW functionality. See
Working with Library Control Paths
Scalar i6000 Installation Guide
on page 180.
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