I am a littlebit more optimistic about the pci-passtrough. we have lots of
customers which are using this to map their sas controller for their tape
drives into a vm. this setup works without any problems and performance is
also not much lower than native.
whats much more of a poblem is when you share the mapped pci-controller
between multple vms. this is not as stable. that is also the reason why i
asked if this has been done with the fibre-channel controller since vmware
allows the virtualization of fibre-channel devices.
From: "Holger Scherer" <hs@xxxxxxx>
To: "Midrange Systems Technical Discussion"
<midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: 19.03.2019 14:27
Subject: Re: quadstor vtl with as400
Sent by: "MIDRANGE-L" <midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
There is some possibility for PCI passthrough on VMWare but i would not
rely on this for that type of application
(this was one of the topics why we quickly ended testing with VMWare and
used native hardware).
For backing up your VTL - quadstor (and other VTLs) can do replication to
a second VTL or to an external Tape Library.
for sure - what is the use of a backup if if cannot be backed up? ;-)
-h
Am 19.03.2019 um 14:24 schrieb DrFranken <midrange@xxxxxxxxxxxx>:
First I did not think that that VMWare allowed direct access to
hardware. So how do you make the FC adapter available to the VTL Software?
Since it appears that's been done I must be wrong in this regard. Curious
to know hot to that.
More importantly though this is the backup to IBM i, the computer most
likely to contain exceptionally valuable data to your business. Backing it
up is of paramount importance. In a disaster you need to be able to get
that data back 'with the quickness'. Having to potentially rebuild storage
of VMWare. Then VMWare. Then this VM. And finally, only then could you
even BEGIN to start restoring IBM i..... I can't see how one of these in
any virtualization layer would be a backup I could rely on.
And consider then that this VTL being on VMWare would need to be backed
up itself or you wouldn't be able to restore IT! So you would need a
backup of a backup! At the very least you would want it replicated off
site.
midrange.com
