TAPE - Persistant Binding (with Leadville) for Shared FC Tape Drives Under NetBackup 5.1 Control (Doc ID 1009306.1)

Last updated on MARCH 17, 2025

Applies to:

Goal

The StorEdge[TM] Network Foundation HBA requires special configuration steps to bind device World Wide Port Names (WWPN) for use by the Veritas NetBackup sg driver.

In a shared storage environment (where the same tape drive X can be used by both Windows and Unix servers for backups and restores) it is critical that tape drives do not change device paths. The mapping from say "/dev/rmt/0" to a physical tape drive 2 can change after reconfiguration boots, after SAN reconfigurations and after NetBackup configuration changes. However, if the Solaris[TM] rmt device is bound to the World-wide Port Number (WWPN) of the Tape drive, then it is no longer possible for such reconfiguration events to impact the mapping of tape drive to physical Solaris devices.

This document is intended as a guide for Customers who wish to configure FC Tape drives under Netbackup control with the following conditions:
1. The tape drives are Fibre Channel and SAN-based (that is connected via a switch).
2. The host bus adaptors on the server are using the Sun StorEdge HBAs (Leadville stack) - that is the drivers are either qlc, jfca or emlxs.

This document assumes that the correct steps have been taken with regard to SAN zoning, patching and general installation and configuration of NetBackup.

Solution