Limitations On The Number Of Devices - HP StoreOnce B6000 Series Manual

Tape spanning is possible, but not recommended. It is desirable to create cartridges with a size
greater than a full backup, so that the backup fits on one cartridge. However, cartridge formats
and sizes are present mainly to assist the user in identification within a backup application and
for offloading to physical tape. They have no impact on the amount of disk space allocated or
used by the StoreOnce Backup System, which is depends solely on the amount of user data backed
up. No additional disk space is used by creating larger size cartridges.

Limitations on the number of devices

An important consideration when configuring VTL devices is that the library and each drive that
you configure for it counts as a separate device. There are practical limitations on the number of
devices that each host and FC switch or HBA can access.
IMPORTANT:
NAS shares that you can configure. For example: if you configure 250 devices on the HP D2D4312
or D2D4324, you will not be able to configure NAS shares. See also
Table 3 Maximum number of libraries and drives per G3 B6000 appliance
Max libraries
Max drives per library
Max devices per appliance node
Max slots per library (D2DBS)
G2 and G1 products: For iSCSI VTL devices a single Windows or Linux host can only access a
maximum of 64 devices. A single library with 63 drives is the most that a single host can access.
Configuring a single library with more than 63 drives will result in not all devices in the library
being seen (which may include the library device). The same limitation could be hit with multiple
libraries and fewer drives per library.
Table 4 Maximum number of libraries and drives per G2 appliance
Max libraries
Max drives per
library
Max devices
per appliance
Max slots per
library
(D2DBS)
NOTE: Apart from the HP D2D2502i, it is possible to exceed the maximum physical limitation
when configuring any of the above models.
12 Virtual Tape Devices
The maximum number of devices per appliance also impacts on the number of
HP D2D2502i HP D2D2504i
4 8
16 32
20 40
96 96
per node (couplet)
48 (96)
192 (384)
240 (480)
16384
HP D2D4106 HP D2D41 12
16 24
64 96
80 120
1024 1024
Flexible emulation (page
with maximum couplets (4)
384
1536
1920
16384
HP D2D4312 HP D2D4324
50 50
200 200
250 250
4096 4096
13).