Operating System Tape Configuration - HP StorageWorks 12000 - Virtual Library System EVA Gateway Manual

• Small fabric (16 ports or less) may not need zoning. If no zoning is used, make sure that the virtual
tape external Fibre Channel connections resides in the lowest ports of the switch.
• Small to medium fabric (16 - 128 ports) can use host-centric zoning. Host-centric zoning is imple-
mented by creating a specific zone for each server or host, and adding only those storage elements
to be utilized by that host. Host-centric zoning prevents a server from detecting any other devices
on the SAN or including other servers, and it simplifies the device discovery process.
• Disk and tape on the same pair of HBAs is supported along with the coexistence of array multipath
software (no multipath to tape, but coexistence of the multipath software and tape devices).
• Large fabric (128 ports or more) can use host-centric zoning and split disk and tape targets.
Splitting disk and tape targets from being in the same zone together will help to keep the tape
controllers free from discovering disk controllers which it does not need to see. For optimal per-
formance, where practical, dedicate HBAs for disk and tape.
NOTE:
Overlapping zones are supported.

Operating System Tape Configuration

Enterprise backup applications generally support media agents (which communicate with tape and
virtual tape devices) on various operating systems to provide a heterogeneous enterprise backup
environment. The VLS and D2D products support many of these operating system variations. (The EBS
Compatibility Matrix available at
each backup application are supported by VLS and D2D). The Enterprise Backup Solutions Design
Guide available at the same web location has detailed instructions and best practices for configuring
the tape drivers for the following operating systems:
• HP-UX
• Microsoft® Windows
• Tru64 UNIX®
• Linux
• NetWare
• Sun Solaris
• IBM AIX
When adding a VLS or D2D virtual library to a server running a media agent, you must:
• Ensure that the minimum operating system patches are installed.
• Configure the Fibre Channel HBAs in the operating system which generally means configuring
persistent binding so that the virtual library device LUNs are always presenting on the same SCSI
path regardless of SAN configuration changes.
• Detect the virtual tape drives and create the tape drive device paths (generally the virtual tape
robot is discovered and configured by the backup application itself rather than the operating
system). Some operating systems limit the number of tape LUNs that can be discovered to eight
LUNs on each device port (remember there are multiple Fibre Channel ports on the backup devices),
but there are workarounds in some cases:
• Windows Large LUN support.
Enable when using more than 8 LUNs per port. Information is available at
crosoft.com/kb/310072/.
• HPUX Large LUN support (on v11.31 or higher).
http://www.hp.com/go/ebs
HP StorageWorks VLS and D2D Solutions Guide
details which operating systems with
http://support.mi-
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