[H-GEN] LTO-6 tape robots that work with the mtx command under Ubuntu Linux.

[Joel Michael]

On 1/10/2014 6:16 PM, David Seikel wrote:
> One of my clients has a Tandberg StorageLoader 8 tape LTO-5 tape robot.
> It's now time to update to a LTO-6 robot. The StorageLoader has worked
> fine except for one problem - it's immune to scripted tape changes.
> Using the standard mtx command will perform a tape change, but then the
> mtx command will crash, and will fail for subsequent commands. From
> what I can tell, Tandberg has taken the common "Red Hat Enterprise
> Linux is the only one we need to support for Enterprise" approach,
> their drivers probably work fine on RHEL.
> 
> So for the next tape robot, I really want one that is known to work
> fine with mtx running under Ubuntu LTS Linux. Are there any?
> 
Probably not the answer you're looking for, but you may actually want to
approach vendors and ask them about their support for your chosen
platform.  A good reseller will verify this compatibility for you,
especially if you've already got a good commerical relationship with
them.  If you would like a recommendation of a good (Brisbane-based)
reseller who could probably do some of this legwork for you, let me know
off-list and I'll pass on his details.

Generally, if a library works with RHEL with no special drivers and
standard mtx, then it should work with Ubuntu, as the underlying kernel
code and mtx are pretty much the same.  Should, being the operative word
- all bets are off if you need to use a vendor-supplied kernel driver.

I haven't looked at the market for small (8'ish slot) tape libraries,
but in the 30'ish slot space there are only about 3 different libraries
on the market - the Quantum i40 (25 slots), the StorageTek SL150 (30
slots), and the clone-a-rama Overland S200, IBM TS3100, Tandberg T24,
StorageTek SL24, and whichever other vendors use the same library
internals and stick their plastic fascia and badge on the front (24
slots).  The company I work for ended up purchasing StorageTek SL150
libraries, which had a couple of (hardware) initial teething problems
but have been generally reliable and perform well.  We use our libraries
for the final tape copy of our backups (disk-to-disk-to-tape tiering),
but we drive them using Windows servers running CommVault, so almost
certainly a very different solution than what you have.

Hope that helps a bit.