Looking for PCI express SCSI diff card recommendations

[Ken Merry]

So, if you’re interested in newer tape drives / libraries, the connection options are FC, SAS or (lately) RoCE.  The first two work fine, but I have yet to be able to test/qualify a RoCE drive with FreeBSD.  For FC, get a Qlogic board (up to 16Gb is supported now) or a 16Gb or newer Emulex board.  Both drivers support FC-Tape.  I have had much more experience with the Qlogic driver, but the Emulex driver does seem to work fine.  For SAS, get an LSI/Broadcom 12Gb or 6Gb board.  They support TLR, which is the SAS equivalent of FC-Tape.

The only current tape drive vendor is IBM, and you can get LTO (LTO-8 is the latest, 12TB/30TB per tape) or TS drives (TS1160 is the latest, 20TB/50TB) from them.  TS only makes sense for people with a big enterprise budget.

I believe HP stopped making their own tape drives at LTO-6.  Anything HP-branded that is LTO-7 or newer is going to be an IBM drive under the hood.

If you want a tape library, there are a number of options.  I know from copious experience (yes I work there) that Spectra Logic libraries work well with FreeBSD, and their support is good.  IBM should also work fine, and really, most libraries should work with FreeBSD without an issue.

If you want to use LTFS on FreeBSD, I ported IBM’s LTFS to FreeBSD:

https://github.com/LinearTapeFileSystem/ltfs <https://github.com/LinearTapeFileSystem/ltfs>

You would need an IBM LTO-5 or newer tape drive.  LTFS is helpful, but keep in mind it isn’t a backup package in and of itself.  It doesn’t manage multiple tapes, it just gives you a filesystem on a tape.

As for SCSI adapters, I have a several ahc(4) boards in a machine running FreeBSD/head and talking to SCSI and CD devices.  The driver seems to work fine.

One thing to consider if you’re switching machines and looking at buying new hardware, is whether your current tape library is still sufficient for your needs in terms of speed and capacity.  Rather than putting the money towards an LVD to HVD converter, you could put it toward a new tape drive or library.

Another thing to consider is using hard drives for backup.  That might work, depending on your requirements for durability and shelf life for the media.  I’m guessing that buying a number of enterprise SATA (or SAS) drives would probably be cheaper than buying even a used library, media and FC or SAS card.

Ken
— 
Ken Merry
ken at FreeBSD.ORG



> On Jan 13, 2019, at 5:27 PM, Scott Long <scottl at samsco.org> wrote:
> 
> Hi Dan,
> 
> I don’t know of any PCI Express cards that do SCSI, much less HVD SCSI.  You might need to start looking at SAS or Fibre Channel for future tape drives.  Ken Merry would be a good person asl about those.
> 
> Scott
> 
> 
>> On Jan 13, 2019, at 3:22 PM, Dan Langille <dan at langille.org> wrote:
>> 
>> I have an existing SCSI differential PCI card which works. I want to consolidate
>> some services into another chassis, so I am looking for a similar / equivalent card
>> for a PCIE slot.
>> 
>> This is a photo of the connector, showing the SCS symbol.  https://twitter.com/DLangille/status/1084566640887562240 <https://twitter.com/DLangille/status/1084566640887562240>
>> 
>> I am looking for help in locating a replacement. I do not know what to search for.
>> 
>> I think that is a n HD68 connector, but I'm failing to find something on eBay.
>> 
>> Guidance please, especially if you can think of a model number to search for.
>> 
>> Thank you.
>> 
>> -- 
>> Dan Langille - BSDCan / PGCon
>> dan at langille.org
>> 
>> 
>> 
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