Dell PowerVault TL4000 Dell PowerVault TL4000 Failover Configuration Guide - Page 2

Dell PowerVault™ TL4000/TL2000 Failover Guide What is Failover? Failover is an optional feature available for the Dell PowerVault TM TL4000 and TL2000 Tape libraries. Failover is designed to provide automatic path failover to a preconfigured redundant path in the event that a host adapter or control path drive is lost without aborting the current job in process. Failover provides error recovery on an alternate path when a permanent error occurs on the primary path. The failover event is enabled by the tape library and handled by the device driver making it transparent to the running Backup Application. There are two types of Path Failover, Data Path Failover (DPF) and Control Path Failover (CPF). They are closely related however the difference is that DPF is an automatic failover support for the transfer of data, which provides error recovery for systems connected to tape drives while CPF is an automatic failover support for the transfer of commands to move tape cartridges. Please refer to the Failover supported configuration sections of this document for examples of different configurations that can be constructed. Dell PowerVault™ TL2000/TL4000 Configuration Support matrix The configuration matrix section provides a quick reference to drive configurations that support failover in a Dell PowerVault™ TL2000 or TL4000 library. Important Note: Failover is not supported for any configuration containing LT03 drives Drive Configuration LT03 Drives Supported Failover Drive Support LT04 Drives Supported Failover Drive Support LT05 Drives Supported Failover Drive Support SCSI Full Height Yes No FC Full Height Yes No Yes No FC Half Height Yes Yes * SAS Full Height Yes No Yes No SAS Half Height Yes No Yes Yes * Table 1: Dell PowerVault™ TL2000 Supported Failover Configuration Matrix *Requires a Dell PowerVault™ TL2000 library configured with two LT05 Half Height drives 2|Page 12/31/09 version 2.0 Always refer to www.dell.com\support for latest documentation and updates