Dell 124T Tape Library connected to a VM

[bigusdadius]

Has anyone attempted to connect a Dell 124T tape library to a windows 2003 VM hosted on ESX 3.x? In the VMware Server forum, it appears people are trying but with little or no luck - http://www.vmware.com/community/thread.jspa?messageID=466919

Any feedback will be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

[Texiwill]

Hello,

I have had a Dell PowerVault 128T connected to a VM. You need a Passthru SCSI Device for the Changer as well as the SCSI Tape drives. Using things this way presented quite a bit of trouble for me.

I ended up getting quite a bit of SCSI errors on the tape device. Eventually I moved it to a physical server and have not had problems since. IN addition, backups took a huge amount of time.

But your mileage may vary. It is doable and requires an Adaptec SCSI card in the ESX Server (one from the HCL, no others work) in addition to the passthru devices in the VM.

Best regards,

Edward

[bigusdadius]

Thanks for the feedback, this is exactly what I'm looking for.