Topic: New Dell Tape Drive!

[Steve]

I just got a new Dell PowerEdge 600SC with the

"DLT VS80, 40/80GB, Internal TBU, with Controller"

tape drive.  What do I need to do to make it work?  Is anyone else using this tape drive?

[Bob Todd]

Doubt I can help answer but I'd recommend you at least let people know what version of SME you intend running on it as a starting point.

[Gene Cooper]

Hi,

This is just FYI.  The tape drive is actually a Benchmark tape drive also sold by HP and others.  It's a low performance (by DLT standards) half-height DLT IV drive.

It takes a special cleaning tape, I'm told!

I have installed this drive on SME 5.5/5.6 and I've had problems.  First, the built-in backup functions will not stream the drive...it 'shoeshines'.  

We have also tried Tapeware from www.myezserver.com.  It seems to stream the drive, but Tapeware is undrgoing a version change and we haven't tested the new 7.0 yet.

Please keep us informed as to your problems/successes.  I for one amd very interested in your experiences.

Thanks,

G

[Mats Karlsson]

From the manual, chapter 5.1

http://www.e-smith.org/docs/manual/5.1/supportedtape.html

SME supports DAT and AIT, funne DLT is a pretty common backupdrive so I'm curious why DLT isn't there.

The manual points to another URL:
http://www.linuxtapecert.org/drives.php

Where they also mentions nearly every backup technology except DLT.

And the manual points to redhats hcl list :
http://hardware.redhat.com/hcl/?pagename=hcl&view=advsearch#results

where the drive you has earlier spec. is supported from RedHat 7.3 but older ones are supported in RedHat 7.1.

So what Gene means with shoeshine I'm not shure, hawn't heard that error message before.


Cheers
Mats

[Steve Bush]

I have had to increase the block size to 32k in order to speed up backups with this very same drive.  It works with 5.12+

[Kelvin]

VS80s are DLT-1 drives. Yes, they require DLT-1 cleaning cartridges and does not work with standard DLT cleaning cartridges (most manuals I've seen indicate drive damage if you do not heed this warning). These drives will work with DLT-IV tapes.

I've used a few with Windows 2000 Servers but not SME. However, Linux generally will work with just about any SCSI based tape drives, so I'm quite sure the VS80 will work with SME.

Shoe-Shining is a term used to describe the behaviour of a tape drive when it seems to move the tape back and forth over the tape head at mostly the same spot (because data is not "streaming" from the PC to the drive quickly enough or the drive is having trouble verifying the data being written).

Kelvin

[Steve]

I intend to use the latest version of SME, but if I will use an older version if that's what I need to get it to work.  

I should be able to start working on it by this weekend, so I'm sure I'll have more posts then.

[Gene Cooper]

Steve (Bush),

Can you please explain what you did to change the block size?

IIRC, we experimented and failed gain the anticipated result.

Thanks much in advance,

G

[Steve Bush]

I set

$blksize = '32';

in /etc/flexbackup.conf

when I was sure that the changes were what I wanted I changed the template in:
/etc/e-smith/templates/etc/flexbackup.conf/10Blocksize

You could make a custom templates, but I like to make this change manually everytime I upgrade the server.

[Charlie Brady]

Steve Bush wrote:

> You could make a custom templates, but I like to make this
> change manually everytime I upgrade the server.

Why?

Charlie

[Steve Bush]

In case there's a change to the SCSI driver or flexbackup, I would rather have the temlates be overwritten with a new default value than my values overriding them.

Possibly flawed logic, but it works for me....