Shared Library with EMC NetWorker and one Storage Node

Hello,

as of performance issues with our tape performance I bagan to excam the "Performance Optimization Planing Guide" followed by the "Configuring Tape Devices for EMC Networker" and found our bottelnek in the way the tape drives are attached to the storage node.

Actually all four tape drives and the autochanger are in the same zone and are connectet to a fibre switch in loop trough mode. The switch is connected in direct mode by one channel to the storage node.

The above documentation makes it quite clear that the max. transfer rate for all drives, in sum, would be 170 MB/s which I could confirm.

The output of the inquire command shows them fine:

scsidev@46.0.0:IBM     ULTRIUM-TD5     D8D4|Tape, \\.\Tape2147483646

scsidev@46.1.0:IBM     ULTRIUM-TD5     D8D4|Tape, \\.\Tape2147483645

scsidev@46.2.0:IBM     ULTRIUM-TD5     D8D4|Tape, \\.\Tape2147483644

scsidev@46.2.1:SPECTRA PYTHON          2000|Autochanger (Jukebox),

                                           S/N: 9112004E2F

                                           ATNN=SPECTRA PYTHON          9112004E2F

scsidev@46.3.0:IBM     ULTRIUM-TD5     D8D4|Tape, \\.\Tape2147483643

As you can see, they are all attached over a single channel.

By diging arround I found the "Shared Library with EMC NetWorker" documentation (white paper from July 2010)

This document shows how one autochanger with 4 tape drives could be connected by 2 storage nodes 2 drives attached to one storage node and 2 drives and the autochanger attached to another storage node.

Since this does nor represent our environment, we just have one storage node, I am not sure if this can also be achived with one Storage node.

In the first step I would like to attach one tape drive directly to the storage node, in loop trough mode, without using the switch.

So there wouldn't be any configuration issue on the switch/ data zone in case of an fallback.

So I would have 3 tape drives and the autochanger attached by one channel and one tape drive attached by one channel.

In the second step I would attach 2 more drives by 2 additional chanels directl to the storage node.

My questions are:

1.) Is this possible, it should I guess.

2.) Is it sufficent to use JBedit and when yes how?

3.) If I will have to use JBconfig, should I delete the Jukebox before?

To make it short... what would be the best way to get the four tape drives working, each with 170MB/s.

Regards

Robert