[Sunhelp] High Capacity Tape Drives

[McMurry, James A.]

Not sure about the Compaq drive, but I have a Legato NetWorker server
running on Solaris 7 with a Qualstar tape library.  The library has two Sony
AIT-1 drives and uses the 25GB length tapes.

The drives use the basic st driver, nothing special at all.  NetWorker has
special Solaris drivers in /etc/LGTOuscsi, but these aren't specific to
these drives or this tape library.  I did a reconfigure boot, the two drives
were found as devices 0 and 1, and I configured NetWorker to use them.
Configuring the tape library was easy, too, but that's off-topic.

During a Legato training course, my instructor pointed out that AIT's
relatively slow tape speed (especially compared to DLT-7000) is a real
advantage in networked backups, since the drive doesn't have to do as much
backpedaling if the tape outruns the input buffer from the remote client.
If you've ever heard a DLT drive sound like it's working the tape over with
sandpaper, you're familiar with this problem.  At any rate, the comment made
me happy and somewhat smug.  :)  For locally attached backups, this isn't so
much an issue, because no tape drive is likely to outrun an UltraSCSI (or
better) bus.

If anyone wants further details, let me know.

James McMurry 
GNMC Systems Administration Manager 
Viatel, Inc.  (formerly Destia Communications, Inc.) 
jmcmurry at destia.com


-----Original Message-----
From: Wolfgang Engelien
To: sunhelp at sunhelp.org
Sent: 5/3/00 3:12 PM
Subject: Re: [Sunhelp] High Capacity Tape Drives

I am also looking into high capacity tape drives. Want to
replace my DLT4000. The L280 smiles at me. Should I trust
this smile?

>Has anyone here had any luck with some of these newer high capacity
tape
>drives?
>
>One in particular that looked good was the Compaq 50GB AIT drive -
that's
>50 gigs on a single tape! More with compression turned on.
>
>It looks nice and the documentation says it's compatible with Solaris
x86
>through the "cpqncr" driver (I believe). Unfortunately, that driver is
not
>present on Solaris 8 for Sparc.
>
>Usually tape drives I've used have gone through the "st" driver. And
this
>looks like a standard UltraWide SCSI single tape drive.
>
>Is there any reason why this wouldn't work with the normal "st" driver?
>
>Or does anyone have any suggestions for other AIT or DLT drives that
may
>work with Solaris. I've kind of outgrown DAT/DDS.
>
>Cheers,
>
>George
>
>-----------------------------------------------------------------------
----
----
>George J. Thiruvathukal                       |
gjt at lemont.rice.iit.edu
>Illinois Institute of Technology              |
http://info.id.iit.edu
>Information Technology Certificate Programs   |               p.
1.630.769.8762
>201 E Loop Rd, Wheaton, IL 60187-8489 USA     |               f.
1.630.682.6029
>
>
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#####
# Wolfgang Engelien                       
# Tel.: +1 (212) 746 3724
# Fax.: +1 (212) 746 5818
# email: wolfgang at hanazono.med.cornell.edu
#####
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