Fiber channel tape library connectivity to ESXi Cisco UCS 5108

[samtech]

Hey Guys

I am trying to connect Quantum scaler I40 to my ESXi 5.1 host connected via FC. I am not very good with drawing yet I have tried best to present my setup. There are 2 drives in Tape library HP and IBM. After zoning ESXi host with tape library, both tape drives show upon scanning HBA. However, the backup software is unable to detect these devices.

There are two ways I have come across to make the tape drive available to virtual server.

a) https://virtualizationreview.com/articles/2014/05/01/how-to-configure-vmdirectpath-hba-in-vsphere.aspx?m=1

In doing so, I cant seem to find Fiber to PCI adapter on my UCS

b) http://www.boche.net/blog/2008/10/27/connect-a-fibre-attached-tape-device-to-a-vm-on-esx/

I can see that there are two SCSI controllers showing for the P2v'd virtual machine. However adding the tape library as SCSI devices does not help making them available to Backup exec software.

Any advise please.

[Kirk J]

Greetings.

While that question has come up a few times, I don't believe the pass through is supported for the vHBA on esxi.

FC tape library interoperability is listed in the HCL tool at https://ucshcltool.cloudapps.cisco.com/public/# under the Storage section, Tapes.

There are some FC adapter policy changes that need to be applied to service profile of server/blade, that are noted in that HCL tool.

You would likely need to run Windows and backup exec instance on a baremetal blade config.

Thanks

Kirk...

[Kevin Williamson]

samtech,

We used to run our Fibre channel tape library connected to our mds switch with UCS blades.   We did it under redhat and we did get it talk as a vm as well but we never did that in production.  It's been a few years ago.  We had an IBM TS3310 with Redhat(5 or 6)  If you are trying it as VM,  I think we did it as a pass through device in VM   We didn't go that way because you couldn't vmotion to another host while it was online.

Kevin

[Kirk J]

What was your hypervisor, ESXi, KVM, HyperV?

Thanks,

Kirk...

[Kevin Williamson]

ESXi 5.5 and 6.5.

[samtech]

ESXi 5.1U3.
UCSM 2.2 3(c)
Backup Exec 2010 R3
Quantum Scalor i40

I am trying to P2V backup server for legacy restores. We are going towards Veeam.

[samtech]

My VM can see all the devices (Quantum superloader and tape drives). Problem is on what scsi Id's do I map?

IBM Tape: C0:T1:L0                --> Maps to SCSI id (1:1)

HP Tape:  C0:T0:L0                --> Should map to SCSI id (1:0) as Target is 0 on HBA for this device.

Quantum tape: C0:T0:L1        --> Maps to SCSI id (1:0)

If I try to map HP Tape to SCSI id (2:0), server is not able to detect and so is backup exec.

PS: Although the IBM tape and quantum loader is detected perfectly fine, it fails to load a tape in IBM drive for performing backups. Very disappointing...

[Kirk J]

Greetings.

While definitely unsupported by Cisco TAC, you can try running esxcfg-advcfg -k TRUE disableACSCheck , reboot and see if behaves any better.

As previously noted, the vHBAs are not supported for passthrough on ESXi, (though this is configurable with Windows Server/Hyper-V)

Vmware link for directI/O supported adapters: https://communities.vmware.com/docs/DOC-11089

Disclaimer:

If you get this working, please keep in mind you cannot call TAC if it breaks/stops working, and I would be concerned about having to explain to my management that I built a DR/backup workflow based on unsupported configurations.

Thanks,

Kirk...

[samtech]

I have attached the vmkernel log for reference.

Thank You for your inputs.

[samtech]

What does this do?

 esxcfg-advcfg -k TRUE disableACSCheck

[Kirk J]

See https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/1036811

Thanks,

Kirk...