News Group Posts

obdr tapes

From: Jean-Pierre Radley <jpr@jpr.com>
Subject: Re: SCSI tape drives
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 16:59:41 GMT
References: <Pine.UW2.4.33.0107251250160.21364-100000@yoda.schalit.net>
<9jnbp6$8gk$1@suaar1ab.prod.compuserve.com>
<20010725172533.E14575@jpradley.jpr.com>
<9jo5jb$lpq$1@suaar1ab.prod.compuserve.com> 

Bob Bailin propounded (on Thu, Jul 26, 2001 at 12:05:50AM -0400):
| "Jean-Pierre Radley" <jpr@jpr.com> wrote in message
| news:20010725172533.E14575@jpradley.jpr.com...
| >
| > I'd opt for an OBDR model, which so far as I know, is soley an HP
| > offering.  Using such a drive (OBDR="One Button Disaster Recovery") my
| > OSR5 nightly master backups, made with the latest beta of BackupEDGE
| > 01.02.00, are *bootable* tapes.  No need for the three RecoverEDGE
| > floppies at all.
| 
| But does an OBDR drive require anything special in the way of a SCSI
| adapter, or will any SCSI bios that supports booting from removable media
| also boot from OBDR?

The magic is in the drive, which is a SCSI device and cannot know or care
which brand/model of host adapter is driving the bus.

| And how does HP get around the problem of instructing the end-user on how to
| (easily) change the SCSI boot device to the tape drive? It's been mentioned
| here before that many vendors still leave their systems booting from the
| floppy drive first, just in case of an emergency recovery situation.

Indeed, and you do not want to change that sequence at all.

HP provides the following instruction:

        "power up the drive while pressing the Eject button"

Then the tape emulates a CD-ROM, and if you've ever booted from a CD-ROM,
you'll have seen the message that drive A has becone drive B, and the
CDROM has become drive A.

Couldn't be simpler...

-- 
JP

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