LTO2 Tape on Vsphere ESXi 4

[ElGarufo]

Hi people,

We want to prepare a virtual machine with Symantec and use it an LTO2 Tape attached to an ESXi 4, is it possible ??, the ESXi will recognise the tape so we can use it in the virtual machine????

thanks a lot...

[hotwired007]

I have just had to do this...

I'm running a W2k3 x64 server running with backup Exec 12.5.

When you install the VM, you need to add the tape drive to the installed hardware.

Edit Settings, in the hardware tab, click Add, Select SCSI Device. Then select the tape drive and click finish.

Install backup exec, i used the standard windows drivers for the tape drive as i had issues with the symantec ones...

[dab]

We want to prepare a virtual machine with Symantec and use it an LTO2 Tape attached to an ESXi 4, is it possible ??, the ESXi will recognise the tape so we can use it in the virtual machine????

It depends, if the SCSI controller that connects your LTO is supported by ESX then it shoud be possible, follow the directions gave by hotwired007.

If your controller is not supported by ESX but your HW supports VMDirectPath, you can passtrough the controller directly to your backupserver VM.

Daniel

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[ElGarufo]

Well, im trying to determinate if an old IBM LTO and a new HP ultrium 448 LTO SAS its supported with vsphere 4.... but i cant even found a hardware guide.... only the online guide without any result about LTOs components...any idea???

And to know the posibility of directpassthroght above mentioned???

What about your experience in this...I read a lot of posts about the "problem" of rebooting the ESX system just to resolve LTOs problems....and so on...

thanks in advanced guys

[dab]

IMHO LTO Drives where never on a hcl, since they are peripheral devices like hd's. The point is, that they should be connected trough a supported controller.

So you have two ways to achieve your goal:

- directpassthrough if your hardware (chipset and CPU) is capable of it, in this case the used controller has not to been recognized by ESXi, only by the used OS in the VM

- present the scsi devices with a supported controller trough ESXi to the VM

I've done both ways direct presentation with ESXi 3.5 (> 1 year) and directpassthrough with ESXi 4 (> 4 months) without issues, no reboots of VM or ESX. I was using w2k3 x64 and w2k8 x64 with Microsoft DPM and a single LTO2 drive.

I think there can be some problems with SCSI-ID's and TapeLibraries which can cause some problems, but with single drives it works like a charm in the above specified configuration.

Daniel

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[AlbertWT]

Can we implement VMDirectPath for this case (of utilizing the host peripheral ports for the VM) ?

Kind Regards,

AWT