RE: BRMS tape drive on LPAR

Our Kendallville tape library has 6 tape drives. Three are reserved for
TSM by a Linux lpar. Three are shared by all lpars of IBM i. All lpars
of IBM i in Kendallville see the same WRKMLBSTS
Device/
Resource Status
TAPKVL01 VARIED ON
TAP03 OPERATIONAL
TAP01 OPERATIONAL
TAP02 OPERATIONAL
Works great as long as only 3 lpars at a time try to use the tape library.
Since we have four lpars, it does take some scheduling. Kendallville had
it's own san switch just for the tape library. We've replaced that one
with one being shared with other equipment.

Our Garrett tape library has 4 tape drives. All four are shared by all
lpars of IBM i in Garrett. All lpars see the same WRKMLBSTS
Device/
Resource Status
TAPGRT01 VARIED ON
TAP08 OPERATIONAL
TAP09 OPERATIONAL
TAP10 OPERATIONAL
TAP11 OPERATIONAL
Two racks in Garrett. The most lpars of IBM i on either rack is four.
Scheduling not a problem. Especially since we only use this library once
a quarter. (otherwise it's replicated back to Kendallville and saved
there). Yes, SAN switch, cables, four fiber cards, etc justified for once
a quarter backups. Anything else would seriously extend outage time
during that scheduled downtime. Bad, very bad. Only rack is allowed to
be out of service at a time. Well, ok, the SAN switch is also being used
by other equipment.

Rob Berendt