escott@uunet.uu.net (E. Scott Menter) (10/04/89)
I have 3 GCR Cache tape drives sitting in a storage room, unused. I also have a host of servers (sounds nicer than a "bunch" of servers) in my datacenter, tapeless (or at least, 1/2" tapeless). "Gee," I say to myself, "there ought to be some way of providing these GCRs as a network resource." Well, of course I could pop for a couple of Xylogics controllers and toss them on the first available servers. But, then I pay a price in cycles and security (hosts.equiv access and all that). I'd rather do something more along the lines of a true network resource (like an Imagen laser printer with an ethernet card). Yes, I can work around this: I have a couple of machines with small busses (read: 4/110s) that I could probably sacrifice for this cause. I'm looking for a more interesting (and general) solution, though, if one exists. Thanks. I'll summ. Scott Menter, Manager, Workstation LAN Administration Shearson Lehman Hutton escott@shearson.com
weber@cs.utexas.edu (10/06/89)
In article <1938@brazos.Rice.edu> you write: >X-Sun-Spots-Digest: Volume 8, Issue 152, message 7 of 12 > Much stuff deleted > >Yes, I can work around this: I have a couple of machines with small >busses (read: 4/110s) that I could probably sacrifice for this cause. I'm >looking for a more interesting (and general) solution, though, if one >exists. > The idea of a dedicated machine is a good one and easy to do. Your choice of hardware is not so good. There is a problem in the 4/100; its a dedicated bus master. That means no other DMA devices on the bus like disk controllers and tape controllers. I think that a 3/140 running 3.2 or 3.5 would be faster and besides it would work with a controller. Don't worry about extra memory, the 4MB on the carrera is enough for tape backup. We have a few of these machines running as network bridges and doing tape backups. Works just fine. BTW-a 3/140 with 3.2 is faster on the VME bus that the 4/anything running 4.0. That's what you want for tape backups. Regards, Jeff Weber