Categories
linux NSP Xen

Exporting Tape Autoloaders via iSCSI

A while ago I posted about {{post id=”iscsi-for-scsi-device-passthrough-under-xen-enterprise” text=”exporting a tape drive via iSCSI”}} to enable windows VMs to backup to a SCSI tape drive under Citrix Xenserver. I spent a couple of hours googling for whether or not you could do the same thing with a tape autoloader, and didn’t find a lot of useful information.

So, I just dived in and tried it, and it turns out exactly the same process works fine for exporting a tape autoloader via iSCSI as well, as long as you are slightly careful about your configuration file.

First of all, find your HCIL numbers with lsscsi:
[code]
[4:0:0:0] tape HP Ultrium 4-SCSI U24W /dev/st0
[4:0:0:1] mediumx HP 1×8 G2 AUTOLDR 1.70 –
[/code]

So, we’ve got an HP Ultrium 4 tape drive on 4:0:0:0, and a 1×8 G2 Autoloader on 4:0:0:1. Let’s configure IETd:

[code]
Target iqn.2007-04.com.example:changer0
Lun 0 H=4,C=0,I=0,L=0,Type=rawio
Type 1
InitialR2T No
ImmediateData Yes
xMaxRecvDataSegmentLength 262144

Lun 1 H=4,C=0,I=0,L=1,Type=rawio
Type 1
[/code]

A couple of points to note:

  • I’ve named it changer0, you don’t have to
  • You do have to make sure both the tape drive device(s) (in this case, 4:0:0:0) and the changer device (4:0:0:1) are exported as different LUNs under the same target
  • The other options (InitialR2T, ImmediateData etc) may or may not work for you, consult the IETd documentation for what you actually need and want.

Once you’ve restarted the iscsi target, you can load up an initiator and connect to it, and you should see both devices being exported under the one target. If you accidentally use a different target for the changer and the tape drive, you’ll find that your backup software probably can see the changer device, but will tell you there are not available drives.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.