SCSI Solutions White Paper - HP-UX

availability. The Tape Array can be connected to up to four separate HBAs connected to four

different servers, or multiple drives in the enclosure can be daisy chained together and

connected to a single HBA. The Tape Array 5300 supports a variety of DAT and Ultrium tape

drives, as well as a DVD+RW drive. With the DVD+RW, the Q1592A product described in

section 2.1.4 above, customers can read and/or write to CD or DVD in addition to tape,

offering additional flexibility.

See http://www.hp.com/go/tape for additional details on each of the tape products. For

compatibility of the tape products with OS versions, platforms, and HBAs, click on Compatibility in

the tape products page.

2.3 Optical Jukebox Devices

An option for archival storage, with faster access than tape or other archival solutions such as

microfilm or paper, is magneto-optical disk storage. When large amounts of data require long

term storage with faster access than tape, microfilm or paper, the use of optical disks and

jukeboxes as an archival storage solution should be considered. Optical media has up to a 100

year archival life, and is available in both rewritable and Write-Once (WORM) formats. Write-

once is designed for permanent data storage that can't be altered or erased. Medical archiving

of healthcare data and document imaging are examples where optical archiving may be

beneficial.

Optical jukeboxes provide automated access to archival storage. They come in two forms:

Ultra Density Optical (UDO), which work with the higher density optical media, and Magneto-

Optical (MO). HP’s optical jukeboxes come with HP-patented robotics which provides

exceptional reliability and durability across the optical solution.

For more information on archival storage solutions, go to www.hp.com/go/archival.

2.4 Host Bus Adapters

There are two classes of pSCSI HBA solutions for HP-UX: host-based pSCSI RAID controllers,

and pSCSI HBAs. These are discussed below. For more information on the various HBA

products, go to www.hp.com/go/serverconnectivity and click on Mass storage interface

adapters. See also Section 6.1.5 for information on HBA-specific management utilities

available for certain cards.

Some of the pSCSI HBAs and RAID controllers have both internal and external SCSI connectors,

for attachment to server-internal buses and external buses. With multi-port HBAs there is still

typically only one internal connector, along with multiple external connectors, with the internal

connector on the same bus as one of the external connectors.

CAUTION: Simultaneous internal and external connections on the same SCSI bus are generally not

supported. Internal and external devices can be used on the same HBA as long as they are on different

SCSI buses. See the server connectivity documentation for platform-specific information regarding external

and internal device connectivity requirements.

2.4.1 pSCSI HBAs

The following pSCSI HBAs are currently available on HP-UX:

− A7173A – PCI-X 2-port Ultra320 SCSI card

− AB290A – PCI-X 2-port Ultra320 SCSI, 2-port 1000base-t combo card