> If we buy another tape controller for the 3494 with FCP attachment and > we would have to buy additional tape drives (as the drives are dedicated > to a controller), could we share the robotic 3494? I don't think we can > share the VTS, but that's ok. > Is that doable? Has anyone tried and suceeded?
It works, but it's a real kludge to operate it. You can partition the library and install some SCSI tape drives and some channel-attached, and the open systems folks can use the SCSI ones, and the channel-attached portion can use the rest. The drives can be only one or the other, and it's a physical board swap to change personality from SCSI to channel-attached. It's also a royal pain for your tape librarian to figure out what is allowed in what. No standard IBM zSeries operating system other than Linux supports SCSI tape. I submitted a requirement for 34xx emulation on SCSI drives in VM via both SHARE and WAVV. > Or, from a cost perspective, is a LAN based robotics system just too > cheap to even consider upgrading a mainframe based IBM 3494 system? Depends on how you maintain it. Enormous SCSI-based tape libraries are very cheap, but cost a lot of space and power if you have to have something else for the mainframe stuff. The IBM ones are expensive, but can be shared, albeit awkwardly.
