lees@frith.egr.msu.edu (John Lees) (02/24/90)
We are using EXB-8200 drives from Perfect Byte, Inc., on our 9000/360 cluster servers to back up about 2200 megabytes of disk on each server. The disks are Maxtor XT-8760S and Micropolis 1588-15 SCSI disks (769 mb unformatted, 550 mb usable in a filesystem). The tapes are on the 98658A SCSI interface (1.5 mb/sec) and the disks are on the 98625A SCSI interface (2.7 mb/sec). The disks use the HP-UX SCSI device driver. The tapes use a SCSI driver supplied by Perfect Byte. (Page 92 of the April 2, 1989 HP 9000 Workstations Configuration Guide says: "Through release 6.5 of HP-UX, only direct-access SCSI devices, such as disks, are supported. The use of Series 300 SCSI interfaces with serial devices, such as tapes, requires non-trivial modifications to the SCSI driver".) Source for the SCSI driver is provided with the PE (Programming Environment) product if you want to tinker. The current release of the Perfect Byte SCSI device driver is reliable. The 8mm medium is reliable. We use 8mm drives to back up all our systems: HP, Sun, and DEC; and are very pleased with their reliablilty and ease of use. We have had some problems with the HP-UX SCSI disk driver. In response to our problems, HP has modified the SCSI disk driver included with the 7.0 release of HP-UX. HP is also now including the source for a SCSI tape driver, but with the disclaimer that it may not work. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - O John Lees, Manager of Systems A. H. Case Center for Computer OoO and Network Software Services Aided Engineering & Manufacturing /O lees@egr.msu.edu College of Engineering | ...!uunet!frith!lees 112 Engineering Building (|) lees@msuegr.bitnet Michigan State University | flower CompuServe 74106,1324 East Lansing, MI 48824-1226 __|__ power - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - O John Lees, Manager of Systems A. H. Case Center for Computer OoO and Network Software Services Aided Engineering & Manufacturing /O lees@egr.msu.edu College of Engineering | ...!uunet!frith!lees 236 Engineering Building (|) lees@msuegr.bitnet Michigan State University | flower CompuServe 74106,1324 East Lansing, MI 48824-1226 USA __|__ power "Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent" - Salvor Hardin