Acessing a tape drive from a remote system

[smith364]

I am going to buy an Ultrim LTO tape autoloader. Because of the expense, I would like to access it from other platforms. Can this be done. Example, I would attach this device to machine a and access it from machine b.

Thank you

 

[nAtHaNs]

yes it can be done but i doubt the autoloading function will be available to machine b.

 

[wpdavids]

If you are looking to backup other systems other than the one you have the tape changer attached to, you will need a third party software. Tivoli storage manager is a product recommended by IBM, but you need to make sure your tape changer will work with the backup software.

If third party software is not an option, you will need to mount NFS file systems to backup files on other computers.

I heard that there are other methods, but what I have said should work the best.

Later.

 

[tcorum]

Few choices here. If you have a SAN you can fibre attach the tape drive into your SAN and access it from each box. If you don't then you must use something like Tivoli to backup the other nodes. The down side to using most 3rd party products is that it does not do a mksysb bootable image so you have to perform that using some other method. Most third party products only backup the data on the box. If you are only backing up AIX related nodes and want a cheap 3rd party product that does both mksysb and data backups then you might look into Storix. It does not work with tape libraries but with most tape changers. Its made from the same ground work of IBM Sysback but has an Xwindows interface. If you have no money to spend then you must do mksysb and use NFS to copy them to the box with the tape drive. I use both Tivoli for multi platform backups and Storix to handle mksysb. You just have to pick the method that best fits your budget.

Hope that helps,

Tcorum

 

[LeDam]

You can do that :
Let's suppose uyou want to backuo /usr on host A and your tape drive is on host B :

On host A, go into /usr

tar -cvf - * | rsh B "dd of=/dev/rmt0"

Where B is the hostname of the host with the tape drive...