Tape Redirector and VMWare ESXi 5.5

Tape drive and auto-loader redirector over iSCSI

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JustAQuestion
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Joined: Fri Jan 10, 2014 9:43 am

Fri Jan 10, 2014 9:45 am

Hello support team,

will your tape redirector also work on an VMWare ESXi 5.5 host system? Any experience?

Many thanks in advance!
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Anatoly (staff)
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Fri Jan 10, 2014 10:54 am

Hi!

Thank you for the interest to our product.
Tape Redirectror should allow you to export the Tape to anything that has iSCSI initiator. If that fits your environment, then it fits your plan.
Best regards,
Anatoly Vilchinsky
Global Engineering and Support Manager
www.starwind.com
av@starwind.com
JustAQuestion
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Joined: Fri Jan 10, 2014 9:43 am

Fri Jan 10, 2014 11:42 am

well, that does not answer the question at all. Let me rephrase. Where do you install the Tape Redirector? Because all I see on your website is an picture with Windows Hyper-V on it and what looks as if the Tape Redirector has to be installed on the Hyper-V host and then redirects it to a VM running on it. But what about VMware ESXi? Can you tell explicitly how this would be installed? Because I don't see a VMWare VIB file for installation anywhere on your website, which, if I understand your depiction correctly, would be needed to work.
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anton (staff)
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Fri Jan 10, 2014 12:29 pm

Tape Redirector is a Windows application so cannot be executed inside ESXi kernel.
JustAQuestion wrote:well, that does not answer the question at all. Let me rephrase. Where do you install the Tape Redirector? Because all I see on your website is an picture with Windows Hyper-V on it and what looks as if the Tape Redirector has to be installed on the Hyper-V host and then redirects it to a VM running on it. But what about VMware ESXi? Can you tell explicitly how this would be installed? Because I don't see a VMWare VIB file for installation anywhere on your website, which, if I understand your depiction correctly, would be needed to work.
Regards,
Anton Kolomyeytsev

Chief Technology Officer & Chief Architect, StarWind Software

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sucram65
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Wed Jan 15, 2014 3:06 am

I have it running on a Server 2012 machine with a Dell TL2000 Tape Library connected to the machine. The robot and two LTO4 drives are exported as targets. I then have a Windows Server 2008 VM running under ESXi 5.1 using the MS iscsi initiator to connect to the targets. It runs Backup Exec 2012 which backs up to disk and then duplicates weekly jobs to the TL2000. The problem I have now is that Linux vm's are being refused connections to the targets. I have a Netbackup server running in a Hyper-V vm which couldn't connect. As a test I setup another Linux VM in ESXi and tried to connect and it is being refused connections to the target also. Can't figure out why. Firewalls are off on VM's. Maybe you guys could tell me what might be going on. The firewall is also off on the Server 2012 machine hosting the targets.
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anton (staff)
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Wed Jan 15, 2014 10:19 am

What port do you use to connect? By default Tape Redirector is using different from iSCSI default port to allow multiple targets on the same machine.
Regards,
Anton Kolomyeytsev

Chief Technology Officer & Chief Architect, StarWind Software

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sucram65
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Joined: Wed Sep 04, 2013 6:49 pm

Wed Jan 15, 2014 7:05 pm

I'm using 33628 for the port. However, I just saw this http://www.starwindsoftware.com/forums/ ... t3372.html thread and it has given me a possible clue. In the configuration tab in Authentication Parameters, which is under the Managent Interface heading of the Server settings, I have Authentication Type set to Basic with the username root. This works fine for Windows initiator connnections. I'm not using CHAP so it did not occur to me that this might be a problem for Linux initiators connecting. I have to wait for a duplication job running in Backup Exec to finish and then I will change the Authentication Type to Anonymous to see if that resolves the Linux connectivity issue. I'll report back.
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Anatoly (staff)
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Tue Jan 21, 2014 12:09 pm

Hello sucram65,

Can you please give us an update for us?
Best regards,
Anatoly Vilchinsky
Global Engineering and Support Manager
www.starwind.com
av@starwind.com
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