HP Ultrium 232e, Getting Started Manual

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7
Usage models
The tape drive (B) can be used in a standalone or network environment. It should always be
directly attached to a VHD SCSI connector on the storage server (A), as shown in Figure 1.
Recommended models
The following table shows the recommended usage models and “Optimizing performance”
on page 32 provides further information about factors that can affect performance.
table 1: recommended usage models
A RAID disk subsystem is recommended, especially for Ultrium 448 drives. A single disk,
particularly a fast disk such as a 15K RPM drive, will also be sufficient, but be aware of other
factors that can affect performance—such as, compressibility of data, disk fragmentation and
the number of files. You can use our free performance assessment tools, which are available
standalone or integrated into HP Library & Tape Tools, to check tape performance and test
whether your disk subsystem can supply data at the optimum transfer rate. You can also use
these tools to calibrate your restore performance and maximal tape performance with more
compressible data.
Other models
The tape drive may work with other usage models, such as network attach storage (NAS) and
storage area networks (SAN), but HP does not currently provide technical support for
installing and using standalone Ultrium tape drives with these architectures. Similarly,
connection to fibre channel may be possible, if you purchase and install a fibre channel/SCSI
bridge, but it is not currently a supported option.
Please check
www.hp.com/go/connect
for the latest supported configurations.
Direct Attach,
single storage server
Across the Network,
single storage server, multiple clients
Ultrium 448 Recommended Recommended
anything less than Gigabit Ethernet
may limit performance
Ultrium 232 Recommended Recommended
anything less than 100 Base-T
Ethernet may limit performance