Shared Tape Library use TSM & SBE

Tape drive and auto-loader redirector over iSCSI

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awolfkiel
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Joined: Mon Mar 23, 2015 10:14 pm

Mon Mar 23, 2015 10:26 pm

Is Tape Redirector a possible solution to sharing a single tape drive (& server) TS3100 (SAS/LTO5) by Tivoli Storage Manager (TSM) 7.1 and Symantec Backup Exec (SBE) 2012?

In discussions with IBM TSM, they explained that SBE & TSM cannot share a single tape because IBM uses Atape driver and Symantec uses the Symantec Tape Driver. You can't load two drivers for the same hardware on Windows.

If we separate the hardware from the software with tape redirector this problem goes away? (Both SBE & TSM use iSCSI and drivers stay local to their separate VMs).

We need TSM to do occasional data transfers (TSM on a remote system writes tapes; we import them and read the data back to a data store).

We use SBE to do scheduled backups (& very infrequent restores).

Has anyone ever shared the same tape drive with two separate backup software programs?

Both SBE & TSM require bare metal access to the tape library. Neither supports virtualization of the SAS interface.

I am looking to save the cost of a second bare metal server ($5K) and second tape drive ($10K).

Thanks!
Albert
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anton (staff)
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Tue Mar 24, 2015 11:10 am

Yes, absolutely you can do that as in our case we need just raw access to tape loader and you install backup tape-specific drivers on another host where tape backup actually runs (bare metal or inside a VM).

You just cannot share hardware between multiple consumers @ the same time )) Obvious reasons: backup apps would mess up with a data driving tape hardware crazy...
Regards,
Anton Kolomyeytsev

Chief Technology Officer & Chief Architect, StarWind Software

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