Easiest solution for adding Fibre Channel Tape Backup to Xserve RAID setup

I'm interested in getting a Fibre Channel LTO-3 tape library such as the Exabyte 221L for my Xserve RAID/Xserve G5 setup. I realize there are SCSI LTO-3 solutions that are less expensive than FC, but I'd prefer not to have to add a SCSI card to my Xserve, mainly because I'd have to pull the video card and run the server headless (horrors!). However, I understand that I must get a Fibre Channel switch to allow the LTO library, the Xserve, and the Xserve RAID to communicate... you can't just daisy chain FC devices. The least expensive switch I can find is the new QLogtic SANbox 3050 for about $1800. For my situation, in which these will be the only FC devices I'll probably ever use, does this switch sound appropriate? The specs on the switch can be found here: http://www.qlogic.com/products/sanbox/sanbox_3050.asp.
Xserve RAID & Xserve G5 Mac OS X (10.4.5)

For simple environments like yours, it's trivially easy. You must plug everything in, and you're good to go... as simple as a network switch.
Now if you start adding multiple hosts (i.e. plug in a second Xserve or G5), you need to be careful, because in the default configuration everything is "wide open," so every device can see every storage LUN. This would actually be problematic, as systems could (actually, would) corrupt each other's storage. When you get to this point, you'll need to look at either zoning the ports on the switch, or using LUN masking on the Xserve RAID to allocate specific pieces of storage to specific hosts.
But for now, just get the switch, plug everything in, and you're off.
BTW if you mark "answered" for me, versus for the thread overall, it helps me out a bit in this forum ranking system, whatever it is.
Cheers.

Similar Messages

Xserve RAID setup for mixed platform office

In our office we have several Macs and Windows machines that regularly read the same files during various tests we run. Unfortunately these files are spread out across various drives on various systems and many of the files are duplicated in many places.
To make us more efficient as well as provide reliable backup for our critical test files I'm considering an Xserve RAID setup.
I understand a computer is needed as a controller and an Xserve is typically used for this. Could a Dual 2GHz G5 serve this purpose? It needs OS X Server installed? Does the G5 get a Fibre Channel card in order to connect to the G5 to the RAID and then the rest of the office can connect to the G5 to access the RAID via GigE.
We are not editing video, I don't see that all the clients need Fibre.
How about Windows clients, are they able to seemlessly access the RAID just like Macs?

> I understand a computer is needed as a controller and an Xserve is typically used for this
Yes, you need a controller, but it doesn't need to be an XServe. Any host will do.
> Could a Dual 2GHz G5 serve this purpose
Yes, quite easily. You just need an appropriate fiber channel card in the host that you're attaching the XServe RAID to.
> It needs OS X Server installed?
No. You don't even need Mac OS X installed - the XServe RAID is platform agnostic and can be used with Windows, Linux, and other Unix systems.
> Does the G5 get a Fibre Channel card in order to connect to the G5 to the RAID and then the rest of the office can connect to the G5 to access the RAID via GigE.
Correct. You'd use some kind of file sharing on the G5 to share the XServe RAID to the network clients. The only caveat is that Mac OS X Client only supports 10 active client connections. If you need more than that you may need Mac OS X Server.
As for the Windows clients, they can access the RAID volume through the G5, too - you'll just need to enable SMB file sharing on the G5.

Looking for a Fibre-Channel interface

Does there exist a Fiber Optic communications interface, specifically "Fibre-Channel" for which LabVIEW drivers exist?
Perhaps one of the select integrators may have one or know of one.
Paul Conaway
Lockheed Martin, Syracuse

[Warning: A little self promotion follows. Read at your own risk!]
I am working a project now that includes a "Fibre-Channel" phase in a future phase. We have done a lot of research into this area and are developing benchmarking systems that will let us quantify the determinism of various transport mediums. The current implementation is building on a SCRAMnet gt fiber network to do the measurements.
If you think we may be able to help you out, you can e-mail me at
[email protected]
and I'll put in in contact with management types.
[End of shameless self promotion]
Ben
PS: If you are at the same facility as "Rick Lucas", tell him that "Ben says 'Hi!'"
Message Edited by Ben on 09-24-2008 07:57 AM
Ben Rayner
I am currently active on.. MainStream Preppers
Rayner's Ridge is under construction

Suggested methods for full backup of XServe RAID data

I know this is only peripherally related to the discussion topic, but since every other suggestion posted here is followed by the disclaimer that you should make a full backup of your data before proceeding with any major operations on your RAID arrays, I'd like to know what more experienced admins do in order to create a full backup for reasonably fast recovery in case of substantial data loss during maintenance/repair.
Our current "backup" availability is incremental optical disc archival (our data is mostly "write-once"), but this isn't entirely practical for recovery since it's over a terabyte of data. Since the connected server has a free hot-swappable SCSI drive bay as well as an interface for external SCSI devices, not to mention the fiber channel and ethernet interfaces, the options that I'd consider in order would be:
1. A handful of 150-500 Gb SCSI hard drives, rotated out of the hot-swappable bay
2. An external tape drive attached to the SCI interface (with appropriate tape size, maybe the LTO-2 with 200Gb native capacity?)
3. Some other external SCSI storage device
4. Larger optical disc archival (I hear there are technologies arriving in the near future)
5. Network-based option; remote seems impractical due to sheer size, but perhaps local?
The idea is to make a full backup (long-term solutions are superior of course) of 1-2 Tb of data on the XServe RAID before attempting major surgery. Suggestions for common, accepted, tested, efficient methods for accomplishing this would be greatly appreciated. I apologize if this thread isn't on-topic enough for some of you.
-Brian

Brian,
Tape IMO is kinda yucky (to steal a term from your average 3 year old). It's fairly slow to back up to, it's very slow to restore, and it's actually not that reliable by itself (I worked with a large enterprise customer who said their backups were successful about 70% of the time (!!!)).
That said, tape has the advantage that you can offsite it and archive it very cheaply, and the media are fairly cheap, so you can make lots of backups, so if one fails, you probably can restore the data from another tape.
Disks are more expensive initially, but end up being pretty reliable, and you get a lot more flexibility (plus, they're fast).
An emerging "best of both worlds" backup strategy is what's called disk to disk to tape, where you typically back up to another large "disk," for example a second Xserve RAID. Data is then backed up from the second disk to tape, which is taken offsite... thus tape is used for what it's best at (offsite archival). Restore can be from disk in most cases, which is 10-20x faster than restoring from tape. People use software packages like Netvault's Bakbone or Atempo's Time Navigator, which can handle the whole process, and it works quite well. The backup disks (e.g. the RAID) can be onsite, or can be at a backup site a couple KM away, attached via optical (this is preferable, for DR reasons).
For cases where a second Xserve RAID is prohibitively expensive, cheaper (and slower) RAID 5 enclosures like Wiebetech's RAIDtech can provide a large (say, 1.6 TB) RAID 5 volume, accessible over FW800 or SATA (not sure if they have a SATA-based one yet).

Adding Additional Drives to 3.55 Xserve RAID

So, we just purchased the 3.55 Xserve RAID (7 500gb ADM's). I'm surprised to read that I cannot "grow" the volume by adding ADM's without reformating the volume using OS X. Is this still true?
Our intention was to simply add ADM's as needed, however this is likely not going to work... if each time I need to offload the data and reformat the volume.
Annoyed.

Xsan allows you to aggregate fibre channel LUNs (analogous to "disks") into what are called "storage pools." You then aggregate storage pools into volumes. So to grow a volume, you can either add more LUNs to an existing storage pool, or you can add more storage pools to a volume.
A bit technical.
Keep in mind that to run Xsan, you will need a few things:
1) A fibre channel card for every machine that wants to access the volume over fibre
2) A dedicated ethernet network which is separate, and used specifically for metadata traffic on the volume -- this enables Xsan to do file locking
3) A pair of dedicated metadata controller machines -- preferably Xserves with > 2 GB of RAM, to manage the SAN.
At minimum, figure $20K on top of the storage to get started with Xsan, if you want it to perform well and be reliable. You owe it to yourself to get Xsan training and certified as well -- making errors early in the planning/deployment process can magnify later on.
Xsan is great for what it does best -- high speed, shared, video editing -- but to just give the ability to grow a volume, I personally think it's overkill. If you can stick to one RAID you could probably do a concatenated RAID volume with OS X's built-in RAID.

Added a 2nd Array on my Xserve RAID, Though it's not appearing in disk utilityt

I have an Xserve RAID unit. Up until now I have just been running 1 side of it with 7 drives on RAID 5 = about 4TB. I recently picked up another identical RAID unit with 7 drives to fill out the right hand bay of the unit doubling our capacity. I have installed these and initialised the array which took about 48 hours, it's now showing as online and green lights all the way.
Now I've gone to make use of the extra space but it is not showing as available in the mounted RAID icon on the desktop, nor will the new array appear in disk utility. When I access server admin however, on the overview screen it shows I have 8TB on offer. Contrary to this in the system profiler the 'Fibre Channel Domain 2' is not reporting any SCSI devices unlike 'Fibre Channel Domain 0' - Not sure this is related.
If anyone can help me gain access to the new found 4TB I would be greatly appreciative.

it is not showing as available in the mounted RAID icon on the desktop
It won't.
The XServe RAID is really built as two independent RAID controllers and drive sets in one enclosure.
The 7 left-most drives are connected to the top controller, and the 7 right-most drives are connected to the bottom controller. They are independent. There's no way to build a single 14-drive array - the best you can do is build two 7-drive arrays.
What you should find is that if you connect the bottom controller to your server, the second array should appear on the desktop, separate and distinct from your existing volume.
If you really need to expand your volume to cover all 14 drives then you'll need to use software RAID 0 (striping) on the server to meld both of the 7-drive arrays into a single logical volume.

Looking for best solution for adding Text Alerts to site

I would like to add a feature to a website which permits visitors to get text alerts on their mobile phones. Can someone recommend an application...preferably one which is free.
Thanks1

Here's a tutorial to help you build it into your own application:
http://net.tutsplus.com/tutorials/php/how-to-send-text-messages-with-php/

Fibre channel lights on Xserve RAID

I have a G4 Xserve 1.33Ghz connected via Apple's Fibre channel card to a Xserve RAID. 3 drives installed, RAID 5 and a hot spare. The drives are installed in bays 1-4, but the fibre channel activity light is off on the left one, but active green for the right one. There are no drives in bays 8-14, the RAID controller is active.
Surely the left light fibre channel light should be active, and the right one off.
Any ideas, thanks

Hmmm.
I recall the lights on the RAID might be the reverse of what's expected? I'm not 100% certain here -- this may be normal behavior.
Can you see the LUNs in Disk Utility? That's where you can usually check. You may also want to try rebooting once -- just in case the LIP message sent when the RAID came online was ignored.
As for the RAID initializing... once you're above 2% or 3% or so it should be visible from the host... the default is to use RAID Now background initialization which means the volume is available for use (and safe to use -- data is protected), though a bit slower while the initialization completes. Initialization takes a long time -- ~30 hours or so.

How to obtain target WWN for a LUN On Windows 2012 R2 Hyper-V with Fibre Channel SAN

I have a large collection of Hyper-V hosts for which I would like to retrieve the target WNN and LUN ID for the LUNs visible on each host. By target WWN I mean the storage array's WWN.
I have tried using the root\wmi namespace to retrieve MS_SMHBA_PORT_LUN instances, but I get 0 instances back.
I get instances of MSFC_FibrePortHBAAttributes back, but those only tell me the local host's HBA WWN, not the target information.
This information must be stored somewhere, because you can't access the LUN without it, I hope there is a way to retrieve it. Is there? Or is it write only during LUN setup?

Hi,
Have you checked these two postings:
http://terrytlslau.tls1.cc/2011/08/how-to-find-world-wide-name-wwn-in.html
http://pkjayan.wordpress.com/2011/08/17/world-wide-name-wwn-for-a-fibre-channel-hba-on-windows-server/
You need the FCINFO tool, which you can get from:
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=17530
Cheers
Andrew

New storage solution for library

hi, i need some advice on external storage. i have just moved my entire library to an external fw800 lacie drive but it is taking so much longer to come up with the thumbnails than when the library was in my g5. why would this be? i thought that fw800 was super quick but it's nowhere near the speed i was used to. any ideas as to why please?
thanks,aidan

Hey Aidan,
You didn't mention how big your library is now and how big you might think it will grow to. Definitely you could upgrade the drives in your computer if your library is small. There are now 750 gb sata drives available and inexpensive SATA pci cards to attach them too if you need more drives. You can read on the net about ways to clone your existing drives to a newer drive without too much trouble.
Then there are a ton of different solutions for adding more drives internal and external. I had been using two external housings with about 10 removable trays each holding a 250gb sata drive for a while and that worked really well. I started with just one drive enclosure and two trays and just expanded from there as I needed more storage for my images. Having two made it really easy to create backups of my images because I would just insert an empty drive to the second enclosure and copy the whole drive over and I suspect two of these would also work really well as a libray + vault for Aperture. I had these drives connected to SATA pci cards in both my G4 dual and G5 computers.I got my enclosures, trays and cards from granitedigital.com but you could get them from a lot of places.
Aperture doesn't support more than one volume (which in my opinion is very poor idea for working photographers who will no doubt generate more images than can be effectively stored on a single volume in perhaps just a week) so I had to get something bigger. I now have a Highpoint Raid 2322 card and their X4 housing that holds 4 - 400gb sata drives that make up a RAID array (Rendundant Array of Inexpensive Disks) all connected via one cable to the computer. This is kind of expensive but has really fast performance, 1.1 Tb of storage, and some safety if a drive goes bad. You can actually create a RAID array with any two or more drives with the Apple disk utility software which is nice, but the hardware solution using the pci-x card is faster. Again lots of vendors can offer solutions to add more sata drives internal or external and the SATA drives have come way down in price.
I use an Infrant Ready NAS NV as my backup vault which I connect to over the internet. The backup doesn't need to be so fast and its nice to have it in a different location than my computer for added security. All this cost a fair bit of money I guess, but it all works, and works well and I have double security on my files (1st with the RAID, and 2nd with the backup).
I just hope that the Aperture team continues to fix some of the problems with this promising software so that all the effort to create the storage and backup vaults and then migrate all my images becomes worth it in the end.
Eric

Fibre Channel Ethernet

Our Apple Rep tells that Apple does not officially support Fibre Channel Ethernet, but that he has heard of customers using it. I am asking for some contact information, but also thought I would try here and inquire if anyone has experiences to relate using the Intel PRO/1000 pf Fibre Channel ethernet card with XServes.
Thanks!

I would suggest you post this in the XServe forums where you may get some better responses than in this forum.

XServe-RAID Offsite Backup

I was hoping to use the left controller of the RAID to backup all my clients using TimeMachine and then have the right controller mirror that on the fly (so that would be RAID 50). I was then hoping that I could swap out ALL the right controller drives to store them off-site each week.
Would that plan be possible do you think? OK to take out all drives from the right controller at the same time, leaving the left RAID5 running on its own until the new set is put into the right controller to rebuild the RAID50 again? Make sense? Possible?
Thank you, Grant

However there just doesn’t appear to be any failsafe easy solution to backup the XServe RAID for offsite storage is there. Is is quite unfortunate and surprising and I would have thought there would have been a methodology worked out for this somewhere. But from what I am hearing, there isn’t.
Xserve RAID is a storage array box, and (somewhat confusingly) it's exceedingly uncommon to back up "just a storage box." I do know a few storage controllers that offer replication capabilities, but I'm extremely suspect that the tools work reliably. Storage controllers don't have all of the context on the processing that they need to perform reliable data replication; to ensure consistency.
It's common to perform remote replication via network and tools are available to do that. You almost certainly will end up with local customizations here, too.
The tools are specific to particular application storage involved; there's no Server Time Machine here, as you need use (for instance) mysqldump or you need MySQL replication for a MySQL database, and a different tool for another database. Or you need quiesce the databases.
Which leads various folks to punt on the process, to shut down down the server, and block-clone the disks involved. To quiesce the server. That too can likely be automated, with some scripting and a controlling host.
As for the remote storage (when not using a network), getting the data off-site then depends on what removable media is available. Ultrium tape has decent capacity and good physical reliability and speed, but tends to have poor support on Mac OS X Server, and Ultrium drives and loaders tend to be expensive. Removable disks do reasonably well here, and various options are available, but they're less physically reliable than tapes. For tens of gigabytes, flash media is a potential option, though it's not the speediest of storage.
Networking can be an option here for remote storage, depending on how small your delta (churn) and how good your compression is and how big your network pipe might be; your network pipe has to be big enough to manage your maximum available window.
If you're looking for turn-key, there are commercial products which claim to deal with this stuff. And unless they're using mysqldump or such for databases, I'm professionally skeptical at the integrity of the archives they create on an active server. (I've watched the storage and data archive folks claim to have solved this for thirty years now. They can mostly solve it, too, for some values of mostly.)
[Here is a MySQL mysqldump|http://labs.hoffmanlabs.com/node/1336] procedure, which can serve to show how to do daily, weekly or monthly archives, and how to run mysqldump tool from bash.
(I am aware of one operating system that can mirror active disk data across a data link and across hosts and across storage controllers and can operate with fully distributed shared write, and that OS obviously and specifically targets high-uptime environments, but that OS environment is not cheap. And it's not Mac OS X Server. And even that environment can't correctly capture an active database for an offline archive; even there, you need to quiesce the database or use database-specific tools.)
It'd be feasible for somebody to create a (big, hairy) tool to catch all the usual suspects on a Mac OS X Server box. But then you have to maintain it across all of the slightly-weird installations, and you also have to deal with restorations. (I'd love to write a generic one of these; this would necessarily be a superset of Time Machine. This is a big and complex project, and one that would require extensive testing.)
Server boxes are not client boxes. Servers require real work and real thought and real configuration. And as production requirements increase, they also tend to require some knowledge of the shell and of scripting and writing (or acquiring) some site-management tools.

Xserver Fibre Channel with tape backup issues?

Is this correct, that OS X 10.4.9 and 10.4.10 has a fibre channel issue with external tape drives (as well as SCSI drives)???
And this is to be fixed in 10.4.11? Do we have a time frame when we will see 10.4.11 to fix this major snafu?
I'm going to decide on a different server (in the meantime) and do net backups if this is the case. But what about others that run backup off the server, attached to an Xserve RAID?
BTW, I contacted BRU support with query on their software...I give kudos to them. Their support is spot on!
Message was edited by: Eddie Ski

Retrospect is just hideously, egregiously out of date and I don't think EMC gives a d*mn, at all.
Even pre-Intel, it will happily LOCK up your server while failing to properly time out when trying to talk to a tape library. It's well-known, Retro + Tape Library = h*ll on earth. And the fault lies squarely with Retro because something like Bru and other more expensive software does not have the same issue.
So let's just make sure -not- to judge "SCSI" isues in OS X based on the ungodly-awful behaviour of Retrospect. Might as well do automobile performance tests using only amateur drivers ; )

How Backup on DISK for Standby when Device "Tape" is alredy configured

hello Dba's
For 3 Weeks I've this issue and I start don't get
usualy this database ws backup on Disk but last month we decided to setup the DLL fro Netbackup on TAPE
and I've configured the RMAN for tape and it works fine.
Now I need to Backup on DISK to create my Standby Database, because the Secondary Server doesn't have the DLL/License for TAPE
So i decided to proceed as a backup on Disk but when I try it alyway gpo into TAPE !!!!!
Any help is welcome.
txs
RMAN configuration parameters are:
CONFIGURE RETENTION POLICY TO RECOVERY WINDOW OF 30 DAYS;
CONFIGURE BACKUP OPTIMIZATION ON;
CONFIGURE DEFAULT DEVICE TYPE TO 'SBT_TAPE';
CONFIGURE CONTROLFILE AUTOBACKUP ON;
CONFIGURE CONTROLFILE AUTOBACKUP FORMAT FOR DEVICE TYPE DISK TO '/backup/export/cf_%F_$ORACLE_SID';
CONFIGURE CONTROLFILE AUTOBACKUP FORMAT FOR DEVICE TYPE 'SBT_TAPE' TO '%F';
CONFIGURE DEVICE TYPE SBT_TAPE PARALLELISM 1; # default
CONFIGURE DEVICE TYPE DISK PARALLELISM 1; # default
CONFIGURE DATAFILE BACKUP COPIES FOR DEVICE TYPE SBT_TAPE TO 1; # default
CONFIGURE DATAFILE BACKUP COPIES FOR DEVICE TYPE DISK TO 1; # default
CONFIGURE ARCHIVELOG BACKUP COPIES FOR DEVICE TYPE SBT_TAPE TO 1; # default
CONFIGURE ARCHIVELOG BACKUP COPIES FOR DEVICE TYPE DISK TO 1; # default
CONFIGURE CHANNEL DEVICE TYPE DISK FORMAT '/backup/export/%d_%D%M%T_full_%U';
CONFIGURE CHANNEL DEVICE TYPE 'SBT_TAPE' FORMAT '%d_%D%M%T_full_%U';
CONFIGURE MAXSETSIZE TO UNLIMITED;
CONFIGURE SNAPSHOT CONTROLFILE NAME TO '/u01/app/oracle/product/9.2/dbs/snapcf_SIEB.scf';
RMAN> allocate channel for maintenance device type 'DISK'
2> ;
RMAN-00571: ===========================================================
RMAN-00569: =============== ERROR MESSAGE STACK FOLLOWS ===============
RMAN-00571: ===========================================================
RMAN-03009: failure of allocate command on ORA_MAINT_DISK_1 channel at 06/29/2010 15:14:44
ORA-19554: error allocating device, device type: DISK, device name:
ORA-27001: unsupported device type
Additional information: 1
RMAN> allocate channel for maintenance device type DISK;
allocated channel: ORA_MAINT_DISK_2
channel ORA_MAINT_DISK_2: sid=236 devtype=DISK
RMAN> run
2> 3> sql "Alter System Switch logfile";
4> sql "Alter System Archive Log Current";
5> Backup database plus archivelog format '/backup/%d_%D%M%T_full_%U';
6> sql "Alter System Switch logfile";
7> Backup current controlfile for standby format '/backup/%U_$ORACLE_SID';
8> sql "Alter System Switch logfile";
9> Backup filesperset 10 ArchiveLog all;
10> }
sql statement: Alter System Switch logfile
sql statement: Alter System Archive Log Current
Starting backup at 29-JUN-10
current log archived
allocated channel: ORA_SBT_TAPE_1
channel ORA_SBT_TAPE_1: sid=118 devtype=SBT_TAPE
channel ORA_SBT_TAPE_1: Veritas NetBackup for Oracle - Release 7.0 (2010010419)
channel ORA_SBT_TAPE_1: starting archive log backupset
channel ORA_SBT_TAPE_1: specifying archive log(s) in backup set
input archive log thread=1 sequence=2879 recid=688 stamp=722953267
input archive log thread=1 sequence=2880 recid=689 stamp=722960690
input archive log thread=1 sequence=2881 recid=691 stamp=722963294
input archive log thread=1 sequence=2882 recid=690 stamp=722963293
input archive log thread=1 sequence=2883 recid=692 stamp=722963296
input archive log thread=1 sequence=2884 recid=693 stamp=722963703
input archive log thread=1 sequence=2885 recid=694 stamp=722963703
input archive log thread=1 sequence=2886 recid=695 stamp=722963705
channel ORA_SBT_TAPE_1: starting piece 1 at 29-JUN-10
channel ORA_SBT_TAPE_1: finished piece 1 at 29-JUN-10
piece handle=/backup/SIEB_290620100629_full_qelhf37t_1_1 comment=API Version 2.0,MMS Version 5.0.0.0
channel ORA_SBT_TAPE_1: backup set complete, elapsed time: 00:00:56
Finished backup at 29-JUN-10
Starting backup at 29-JUN-10
using channel ORA_SBT_TAPE_1
channel ORA_SBT_TAPE_1: starting full datafile backupset
channel ORA_SBT_TAPE_1: specifying datafile(s) in backupset
input datafile fno=00020 name=/u01/oradata/SIEB/data/tbs_siebel_data_01.dbf
input datafile fno=00002 name=/u02/oradata/SIEB/system/undotbs02_02.dbf
input datafile fno=00001 name=/u02/oradata/SIEB/system/system01.dbf
input datafile fno=00011 name=/u01/oradata/SIEB/data/tbs_siebview_01.dbf
input datafile fno=00025 name=/u01/oradata/SIEB/data/undotbs02_01.dbf
input datafile fno=00018 name=/u01/oradata/SIEB/data/tbs_siebel_empty.dbf
input datafile fno=00022 name=/u01/oradata/SIEB/data/users_01.dbf
input datafile fno=00019 name=/u01/oradata/SIEB/data/invoice_app_data01.dbf
input datafile fno=00015 name=/u01/oradata/SIEB/data/tbs_dwhview_01.dbf
input datafile fno=00010 name=/u01/oradata/SIEB/data/dm_casebase_docbase_01.dbf
input datafile fno=00014 name=/u01/oradata/SIEB/data/tbs_siebdw_data_01.dbf
input datafile fno=00016 name=/u01/oradata/SIEB/data/tbs_igd_01.dbf
input datafile fno=00017 name=/u01/oradata/SIEB/data/igd_eim_01.dbf
input datafile fno=00013 name=/u01/oradata/SIEB/data/dm_imdoc_docbase_01.dbf
input datafile fno=00023 name=/u01/oradata/SIEB/data/perfstat_01.dbf
input datafile fno=00012 name=/u01/oradata/SIEB/data/dm_imdoc_audit_01.dbf
input datafile fno=00021 name=/u01/oradata/SIEB/data/tools_01.dbf
input datafile fno=00009 name=/u01/oradata/SIEB/data/dm_casebase_audit_01.dbf
channel ORA_SBT_TAPE_1: starting piece 1 at 29-JUN-10
channel ORA_SBT_TAPE_1: finished piece 1 at 29-JUN-10
piece handle=SIEB_290620100629_full_qflhf39l_1_1 comment=API Version 2.0,MMS Version 5.0.0.0
channel ORA_SBT_TAPE_1: backup set complete, elapsed time: 00:12:36
channel ORA_SBT_TAPE_1: starting full datafile backupset
channel ORA_SBT_TAPE_1: specifying datafile(s) in backupset
input datafile fno=00006 name=/u03/oradata/SIEB/index/tbs_siebbig_index01.dbf
input datafile fno=00024 name=/u03/oradata/SIEB/index/tbs_siebel_index_01.dbf
input datafile fno=00004 name=/u03/oradata/SIEB/index/tbs_siebdw_index_01.dbf
input datafile fno=00005 name=/u03/oradata/SIEB/index/tbs_igd_index01.dbf
input datafile fno=00007 name=/u03/oradata/SIEB/index/dm_casebase_index_01.dbf
input datafile fno=00008 name=/u03/oradata/SIEB/index/dm_imdoc_index_01.dbf
input datafile fno=00003 name=/u03/oradata/SIEB/index/tbs_invoice_index01.dbf
channel ORA_SBT_TAPE_1: starting piece 1 at 29-JUN-10
channel ORA_SBT_TAPE_1: finished piece 1 at 29-JUN-10
piece handle=SIEB_290620100629_full_qglhf419_1_1 comment=API Version 2.0,MMS Version 5.0.0.0
channel ORA_SBT_TAPE_1: backup set complete, elapsed time: 00:07:15
Finished backup at 29-JUN-10
Starting backup at 29-JUN-10
current log archived
using channel ORA_SBT_TAPE_1
channel ORA_SBT_TAPE_1: starting archive log backupset
channel ORA_SBT_TAPE_1: specifying archive log(s) in backup set
input archive log thread=1 sequence=2887 recid=696 stamp=722964956
channel ORA_SBT_TAPE_1: starting piece 1 at 29-JUN-10
channel ORA_SBT_TAPE_1: finished piece 1 at 29-JUN-10
piece handle=/backup/SIEB_290620100629_full_qhlhf4es_1_1 comment=API Version 2.0,MMS Version 5.0.0.0
channel ORA_SBT_TAPE_1: backup set complete, elapsed time: 00:00:57
Finished backup at 29-JUN-10
Starting Control File and SPFILE Autobackup at 29-JUN-10
piece handle=c-1097630847-20100629-04 comment=API Version 2.0,MMS Version 5.0.0.0
Finished Control File and SPFILE Autobackup at 29-JUN-10
sql statement: Alter System Switch logfile
Starting backup at 29-JUN-10
using channel ORA_SBT_TAPE_1
channel ORA_SBT_TAPE_1: starting full datafile backupset
channel ORA_SBT_TAPE_1: specifying datafile(s) in backupset
including standby controlfile in backupset
channel ORA_SBT_TAPE_1: starting piece 1 at 29-JUN-10

Thxs for Reply
But When I type Allocate Channel as you suggested I get Error
ORA-19502: write error on file "qslhf5sr_1_1", blockno 1 (blocksize=8192)
RMAN> run
2> {
3> allocate channel c1 type disk;
4> sql "Alter System Switch logfile";
5> sql "Alter System Archive Log Current";
6> Backup database plus archivelog format '/backup/%d_%D%M%T_full_%U';
7> sql "Alter System Switch logfile";
8> Backup current controlfile for standby format '/backup/%U_$ORACLE_SID';
9> sql "Alter System Switch logfile";
10> Backup filesperset 10 ArchiveLog all;
11> }
starting full resync of recovery catalog
full resync complete
released channel: ORA_SBT_TAPE_1
allocated channel: c1
channel c1: sid=12 devtype=DISK
sql statement: Alter System Switch logfile
sql statement: Alter System Archive Log Current
Starting backup at 29-JUN-10
current log archived
skipping archive log file /u03/archive/SIEB/1_2879.dbf; already backed up 1 time(s)
skipping archive log file /u03/archive/SIEB/1_2880.dbf; already backed up 1 time(s)
skipping archive log file /u03/archive/SIEB/1_2881.dbf; already backed up 1 time(s)
skipping archive log file /u03/archive/SIEB/1_2882.dbf; already backed up 1 time(s)
skipping archive log file /u03/archive/SIEB/1_2883.dbf; already backed up 1 time(s)
skipping archive log file /u03/archive/SIEB/1_2884.dbf; already backed up 1 time(s)
skipping archive log file /u03/archive/SIEB/1_2885.dbf; already backed up 1 time(s)
skipping archive log file /u03/archive/SIEB/1_2886.dbf; already backed up 1 time(s)
skipping archive log file /u03/archive/SIEB/1_2887.dbf; already backed up 1 time(s)
skipping archive log file /u03/archive/SIEB/1_2888.dbf; already backed up 1 time(s)
skipping archive log file /u03/archive/SIEB/1_2889.dbf; already backed up 1 time(s)
skipping archive log file /u03/archive/SIEB/1_2890.dbf; already backed up 1 time(s)
skipping archive log file /u03/archive/SIEB/1_2891.dbf; already backed up 1 time(s)
skipping archive log file /u03/archive/SIEB/1_2892.dbf; already backed up 1 time(s)
skipping archive log file /u03/archive/SIEB/1_2893.dbf; already backed up 1 time(s)
channel c1: starting piece 1 at 29-JUN-10
channel c1: finished piece 1 at 29-JUN-10
piece handle=/backup/SIEB_290620100629_full_qrlhf5on_1_1 comment=NONE
channel c1: backup set complete, elapsed time: 00:02:12
Finished backup at 29-JUN-10
Starting backup at 29-JUN-10
channel c1: starting full datafile backupset
channel c1: specifying datafile(s) in backupset
input datafile fno=00020 name=/u01/oradata/SIEB/data/tbs_siebel_data_01.dbf
input datafile fno=00002 name=/u02/oradata/SIEB/system/undotbs02_02.dbf
input datafile fno=00001 name=/u02/oradata/SIEB/system/system01.dbf
input datafile fno=00011 name=/u01/oradata/SIEB/data/tbs_siebview_01.dbf
input datafile fno=00025 name=/u01/oradata/SIEB/data/undotbs02_01.dbf
input datafile fno=00018 name=/u01/oradata/SIEB/data/tbs_siebel_empty.dbf
input datafile fno=00022 name=/u01/oradata/SIEB/data/users_01.dbf
input datafile fno=00019 name=/u01/oradata/SIEB/data/invoice_app_data01.dbf
input datafile fno=00015 name=/u01/oradata/SIEB/data/tbs_dwhview_01.dbf
input datafile fno=00010 name=/u01/oradata/SIEB/data/dm_casebase_docbase_01.dbf
input datafile fno=00014 name=/u01/oradata/SIEB/data/tbs_siebdw_data_01.dbf
input datafile fno=00016 name=/u01/oradata/SIEB/data/tbs_igd_01.dbf
input datafile fno=00017 name=/u01/oradata/SIEB/data/igd_eim_01.dbf
input datafile fno=00013 name=/u01/oradata/SIEB/data/dm_imdoc_docbase_01.dbf
input datafile fno=00023 name=/u01/oradata/SIEB/data/perfstat_01.dbf
input datafile fno=00012 name=/u01/oradata/SIEB/data/dm_imdoc_audit_01.dbf
input datafile fno=00021 name=/u01/oradata/SIEB/data/tools_01.dbf
input datafile fno=00009 name=/u01/oradata/SIEB/data/dm_casebase_audit_01.dbf
channel c1: starting piece 1 at 29-JUN-10
released channel: c1
RMAN-00571: ===========================================================
RMAN-00569: =============== ERROR MESSAGE STACK FOLLOWS ===============
RMAN-00571: ===========================================================
RMAN-03002: failure of backup command at 06/29/2010 16:00:34
ORA-19502: write error on file "qslhf5sr_1_1", blockno 1 (blocksize=8192)
ORA-27072: skgfdisp: I/O error
Linux-x86_64 Error: 2: No such file or directory
RMAN>

Recovery window for tape backups

Hope someone can answer to my questions.
With RMAN you can maintain the number of tape backups that are needed for recovery purpose through the “delete obsolete recovery window” command. E.g. the command below ensures tape backups be kept for recovery within 31 days:
delete noprompt obsolete recovery window of 31 days device type 'SBT_TAPE';
Q:
1) If I use a disk area as pseudo tape area in my backups (through ORACLE.DISKSBT library parameter), I guess the above "delete noprompt obsolete recovery window" command would work on the pseudo tape area as well?
2) At my site the pseudo tape area is backed up to tape nightly through the system backup job, and the tape backups are kept for about 1 month by the tape system. To save space in the pseudo tape area on disk can I just set a small recovery window in the above DELETE command (say 1 day) , and relies on the actual tape system retention policy for oracle backups? How would this affect oracle’s ability to do recovery?
Thanks

1) I would never use a 'faked' tape as a permanent solution - only to test tape backup scripts - , as it slows down the backup/recovery process. From RMAN's point of view a pseudo tape works like a real tape, so all valid commands apply.
2) When you delete a backup, RMAN forgets it. RMAN is not aware of still available backups in the tape system, you have to recatalog the backups. That means overhead in manual maintenance and a source for possible errors.
Werner

Easiest solution for adding Fibre Channel Tape Backup to Xserve RAID setup

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