Rob,
I'm also considering order the 16gb card with our P9.
I had heard that a future firmware upgrade could increase the LTO drives from 8gb to 16gb.
I have some performance data from our old LTO5 drives, and when were only using 1 port on the fiber card.
Since then we reconfigured the Brocade switch from 1 zone to 4 zones to use the 2nd port of the fiber card.
We've also upgraded from LTO5 to LTO7, I don't have any performance numbers for them, as of now.
Below are notes from 2012.
Back in Aug 2012, we discovered that our 8 Gigabit PCI Express Dual Port Fibre Channel Adapter (FC 5735; CCIN 577D) may be only capable of running 1 LTO5 tape drive at 100 %. One LTO5 drive will use 65% (per IBM support) of the 8 gb bandwith (5.2 gb), leaving only 35% (2.8 gb) for the 2nd drive. Also part of the equation is the Brocade 300 SAN fiber switch, with 8 gb ports.
I found this when doing some performance analysis on our saves and dups. The DUPTAP is where it is most noticeable. Save using 1 drive takes 2 hours. It takes 3+ hours to dup the tape.
Below are save benchmark times.
5/12/12 - % system ASP used . . : 59.5577 2844 gb
1 drive - 2 hr 10 mins
2 drive - 1 hr 15 mins
3 drive - 1 hr
4 drive - 1 hr
If I'd ever need to drive all 4 LT05 fiber drives simultaneously, what might be a proper config to keep 100% throughput?
What are some options to resolve this?
Can the 2nd port on the 5735 card somehow be configured to gain additional performance.
Is there a different card that would supply higher throughput?
Links for 5735 card and Brocade 300 fiber switch below.
http://pic.dhe.ibm.com/infocenter/powersys/v3r1m5/index.jsp?topic=/p7hcd/fc5735.htm
http://www.brocade.com/products/all/switches/product-details/300-switch/specifications.page
Paul
-----Original Message-----
From: MIDRANGE-L [mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Musselman, Paul
Sent: Thursday, April 19, 2018 5:48 PM
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
Subject: RE: FC speeds
Buy the faster card while the checkbook is open! (:
Rob, what's the combined throughput of all of the backups running at once? Will that fill 8GB?
Paul E Musselman
PaulMmn@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
-----Original Message-----
From: MIDRANGE-L [mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Jim Oberholtzer
Sent: Thursday, April 19, 2018 5:44 PM
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion <midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: FC speeds
Yes, the 16GB cards will step down to 8GB. No worries there, However,
The 16GB card is easily twice the price of the 8GB card, so if you can't
use it, why buy it?
then the other question is if this is driving tape or VTL, are they that
fast? Answer no. LTO8 is not running at those speeds yet.
Jim Oberholtzer
CEO/Chief Technical Architect
Agile Technology Architects
On Thu, Apr 19, 2018 at 3:12 PM, Rob Berendt <rob@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Apparently when we go from Power 8 to Power 9 we're upgrading from 8GB FC
5735 to 16GB FC EN0A.
The 16GB is supposed to have the smarts to dial down as needed.
Our SAN and it's inserts are currently limited to 8GB FC. Scheduled to
upgrade perhaps next year.
Then there's our EMC DD 2500. I believe that's limited to 8GB FC. True?
I don't believe we're really pushing the speed here but I wouldn't mind
being surprised and that it is possible to be even faster.
We do save from multiple lpars at once into that DD.
Although the TSM on the AIX lpar using lan and not FC.
Rob Berendt
--
IBM Certified System Administrator - IBM i 6.1
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Dept 1600
Mail to: 2505 Dekko Drive
Garrett, IN 46738
Ship to: Dock 108
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Kendallville, IN 46755
http://www.dekko.com
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