HP LTO -5 ultrium 3000 tape drive and SAS-cables

High-Performance Computing Workstations & Servers
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HP LTO -5 ultrium 300 tape drive and SAS-cables

  • Hi i have bought a HP LTO -5 ultrium 3000 tape drive and i am wondering if this Mini-SAS-SFF-8643 to 4 29pin SFF-8482 connectors will work with my motherboard. So i just want to hear if other guys have tried something like this. And if no other people have tried this. Then i will report what the outcome is so other people can learn from me.

  • I have checked the HP LTO -5 ultrium 3000 manual and it seems that the SAS SFF-8643 connector is what i need.

  • But what i am going to try is connecting the Mini SAD SFF 8643 also know as the new U2 connector to my motherbard but the big questions will it work but i am right now waiting for the cable.

  • But i am curious if some guys have experience connecting a LTO tape drive or other hardware to the U2 (Mini SAD SFF 8643) on motherboards.

Here is a list of hardware i am using for this prosject.

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I can’t comment on that setup - but watching with interest as I do have a Quantum LTO2 tape drive working in Linux (but it’s LVD SCSI) and I’m looking to upgrade it at some point.

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What software are you using in conjunction with the tape drive unit? I assume this is for archiving or backups.

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  • I am gonna use a linux distro for the os so in my case either fedora or ubuntu. The software I am gonna use is either bacula but I read one can also use the mt tape drive utility and use tar to compress the files.

  • I have the hp tape drive and LTO 5 cartridges they were shipped faster so now I am only waiting for the SAS cable

  • I am gonna report what happens next.

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  • The LTO 5 tapes seems good they where cheap in Norway only 32 dollar for one and they where brand-new ones . But thing is that the tape drives are expensive but i where lucky i got mine for 233 dollar on the used market and it was lightly used.
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I’m not too confident it’ll work but I don’t really know for sure. In theory, it shouldn’t; because the U.2 connector on the motherboard is really just a PCIE connection, and according to the B&H spec sheet for the LTO-7:

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1211130-REG/hp_bb873a_hpe_storeever_lto_7_ultrium.html

the tape drive connection is a SAS 6Gbps connection, which would imply you’d need an expansion card with a sas controller to address the tape drive.

I’ve never played with anything like that tape drive reader so I’m not 100%, but I wouldn’t assume it would work. If I had to guess, I’d think you’d need something like a Lsi 9211-8i to make it work. But who knows, that’s just my guess.

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  • You maybe right i bought the cables because it was cheaper than a raid card so if it do not work i will buy a raid card. And TheCaveman thank you for the link.

  • I also read that U2 connector is the SAS SFF-8643 connector and in HP LTO -5 ultrium 3000 manual it said that you either need a raid controller or a connector on the motherboard but time will show.

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Some server motherboards do have those connectors onboard since some motherboard’s have Sas add-in controllers integrated onboard.

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I use a mixture of dump, tar and mt (mt-st NOT mt-GNU) for backups, archives and controlling the tape drive respectively.

Note that dump should only be used to backup filesystem snaphots, as it’s not wise to backup a live mounted filesystem.

You don’t want a RAID card, you need a SAS HBA (Host Bus Adapter). For example here’s a link to a list of qualified HBAs for all Tandberg SAS tape drives. The likelihood is these would work with your drive (but see if you can find an equivalent list for HP):

http://www.tandbergdata.com/knowledge-base/index.cfm/sas-hba-compatibility-matrix/

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  • Thanks for the info. I have found the hp docs and i going to read them later and post what i found here.
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Hi all, first post so apologies for the necropost but it looks like the right people were here albeit a while back :wink:

I hoped that now you’ve all had a few years of experience with this I might benefit from your knowledge here :slight_smile:

Requirement:
I’ve similar hardware to the OP above (modern CPU/MB , external LTO-5 tape drive, cartridges, SAS HBA) and I’d like to to use LTFS on a Linux daily driver workstation (not a dedicated server) used to edit and save/backup large video and digital camera RAW files.

Questions:

  1. what software on Linux with GUI access can you recommend?
  2. what Linux distro flavors have better support for LTO, LTFS and backup software; Debian, RedHat, OpenSUSE, other?
  3. Does anything on Linux compare to the Windows Explorer folder drag-and-drop GUI-based LTFS support that you get on Windows 7/8/10 etc?

Any help with resources much appreciated!

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This is closed as it is outside the revived thread guidelines. Feel free to create a fresh topic, or PM one of the Leaders if you think this was incorrectly closed. See here for more info.

@CyberSocialist the thread is over 2 years old already so it might be better to just create fresh one. :slight_smile: