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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Recommended Mac-Compatible SCSI and SAS Tape HBA solutions

Wait for the DAT320

Wait for the DAT320

Mathias Erichsen said:
Hi :)
Have any of you used the HP StorageWorks DAT 160 USB External Tape Drive for storage? Is there any disadvantages if i don´t need more than 80GB pr project/day? Is the transfer super-slow or the media unstable/unreliable?

Mathias
Click to expand...
Hi Mathias,

Wait for DAT320 to become more widely available after the new year. The DAT160 is a good option for capacity, while DAT media not as long-life as LTO, I still have DDS 1 tapes that were written in 1991 on the original Archive Python 1.2GB drives that we restore from in our new BRU version backwards compatibility tests. As to performance, it is very slow at 6MB/sec. This translates to Approximately 21.6GB/hour. With the DAT320, the performance number moves to 12MB/sec, so you'll double that to 42.3GB/hour, so your archival times will be cut in half.

HTH,
Tim
 
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Andrae Palmer said:
I was under the impression that 4x is referring to 4 channels. Because it had 4x on both ends as in:

External Mini-SAS Cable - 4x Mini-SAS (SFF-8088) to 4x Mini-SAS (SFF-8088)
Click to expand...
Unfortunately, that is because all four channels on the port are pushed through the single 8088 connector. For a JBOD, the receiving 8088 port has a demux that splits out the four channels. That's why you need the fanout cables if you want to connect more than one single-channel device to that port.

My google research hasn't returned even an image with a SFF-8088 to 4 SFF-8088 fan out cables.
Click to expand...
That's why I included the Rancho part numbers.

A SFF-8088 to SFF-8088 would be a great start.
Click to expand...
Unfortunately, at $45+ build cost on the cable. that translates to over $75 with average margins to the cost of the HBA. And, if you were looking to connect to a JBOD that required an Infiniband connector, that cable becomes a throw-away.

BTW - not trying to slip into sales mode here, but we include all of the bits in our bundles - Drive, HBA, Cable, Media, Cleaning Cartridge, and Software. And your support comes from one source instead of 3 .
 
Andrae Palmer said:
Thanks Tim especially for the Rancho part numbers. The google search threw me off due to prices being very low and the pictures not showing fan out cables... I was under the impression that 4x is referring to 4 channels. Because it had 4x on both ends as in:

External Mini-SAS Cable - 4x Mini-SAS (SFF-8088) to 4x Mini-SAS (SFF-8088)

My google research hasn't returned even an image with a SFF-8088 to 4 SFF-8088 fan out cables.



A SFF-8088 to SFF-8088 would be a great start.
Click to expand...
Hi Andrae! I dunno if you have purchased your SFF-8088 cables yet. I had a few 1M ones for my HP and QUANTUM tape drives. I have an ATTOTECH R380 and an LSI-SAS3442e-R HBA for my PROAVIO RAID and also my Ultrium4 SAS tape drives (I have access to 3 of these , 2 x HP and a Quantum).

I just ditched the LSI SAS3442E-R HBA here (selling to a mr softee user) I had a SFF-8088:SFF-8048 for the dammed LSISAs3442E-R to that awful Quantum Ultrium LTO4 desktop tape drive and replaced it with a new ATTOTECH H380 (two external SFF-8088).

So I ordered some new cables 2M two (metres) SFF-8088-SFF8088 PROAVIO from B&H photo. These arrived on time and were reasonably priced. I used B&H over some others because they ship outside us&a. Greatly pleased.

You might wanna look there for the SFF-8088 to the 4 x fan cable Tim spoke of. If you have some extra dosh (€.£,$) , INSTEAD you might wanna just get a SAS enclosure and put you SATA2 DDms in that and have a single multi/sff-8088 cable in the enclosure..

I have now 4 x SFF-8088-SFF-8088 cables (2 x 1m and 2 x 2M) from two ATTO TECH SAS HBA's (R380 adn the new H380) on my MACPRO Nehalem! So I am totally ATTOTEch finally. Which means I can configure the firmware without having to dick around with mr softee windoze in bootcamp! Yes the H380 and the R380 after almost 19 months of whinging to Quantum and giving up on Quantum that they (ATTO H380 and H380) work finally with the QUANTUM LTO4 Ultrium Tape drive (QUantum updated the firmware last year finallY!) . I am selling this Quantum tape drive btw and keeping the two HP LTO4 Ultrium HP1840 (very cool) anf the HP LTO4 HP1760..... all from both the ATTO SAS HBAs including the PROAVIO EB8NS enclosure.

fwiw
w
hk
 
I run ET 8bays and 4Bays. Never had an issue with Atto HBA's with them.

If you have hardware raid on the chassis or an expander port on the chassis I could understand it needing a wide port that the H380 doesnt have.

The ET 16bay JS just has 2 ports. I see no reason why this will not work with the R380.
Plugging it into a H380 maybe the issue.


Anyway, I really like ET and I really like ATTO. I wish they would sort their issues out because I get great support from both.


Mobile LTO4
Well this is an option. Drop ya hba into the chassis. connect to LTO drive.
>connect to laptop.
http://www.istoragepro.com/prod.php?id=id0exp1

Anyone see a reason why this might not work ?

s
 
Hey Tim,

I've been reading through this thread and getting a lot of useful information. However, I'm trying to wrap my head around everything I would need in order to start backing up my files. I understand that there are BRU PE packages available, but I don't think I need something that advanced. I'm on a stand alone computer and would only be backing up my own stuff to an LTO 3 drive, and I didn't see any packages that had BRU LE instead of BRU PE.

With that said, I am on Mac Pro with the Nehalem running OSX 10.5.8. I plan to put together an external LTO backup system. From what I understand so far, I would need to buy:

BRU LE software
HP LTO-3 920 external drive
ATTO SAS H380 controller card

Is there anything else that I am missing. The whole cable discussion got me thoroughly confused. Wouldn't the HP LTO 3 drive come with a cable to connect to a controller or is that wishful thinking?

I was thinking of getting an H680 card since it would be nice if I could also connect ESATA drives to the card as well. The price difference doesn't seem all that bad until you factor in the price of the fan out cable. So to my understanding, if I buy the H680 card I could attach additional ESATA drives via the H680 card which I could not do with the H380, but I would have to spend around eighty dollars to buy a fan out cable in order to do that. Of course, if I have to buy an expensive cable anyway if none came with the drive, it might be worth while to get the H680 card instead of the H380.

Any help simplifying the process of what actually is needed to get a basic setup working would be appreciated.

Thanks
 
I am just writing to say thanks to the people on this thread who provided the info to get my Quantum HH LTO4 drive working with 10.6.3 on my Harpertown MacPro.

Quantum has AWESOME customer support. I only had to call them and ask for the firmware update tape, and they sent me a $54 LTO4 tape with the firmware update on it, and said I could keep the tape. I can't believe how great that is!

I'm using an ATTO SAS H680 HBA and Retrospect 8.16261 and everything seems to be working great.

I wouldn't have known what to do if it weren't for THIS THREAD.

Thank you, thank you, thank you!!!
 
Hello guys. My first post here having just acquired a Red Rocket card.

My issue is that I would like to put a SAS LTO4 drive onto a Mac Pro that already has a Red Rocket card in it.

The problem is the Mac Pro has 3 usable PCI-e slots.

1 is x16 lane bus, x16 physical. This needs to be used by the Red Rocket card (requires x8 speed slot)

2 are x4 lane bus, x16 physical slot PCI-e connectors.

All the SAS HBA's mentioned seem to require another x8 lane bus slot.

Does anyone know of any PCI-e x4 cards that support Macs? I found some Adaptecs but they don't have Mac drivers.

Is anyone co-locating a Red Rocket and a SAS HBA in the same Mac?

Cheers for any advice.
 
x4 vs. x8 PCI-E and SAS

x4 vs. x8 PCI-E and SAS

Hi Andy,

While x4 is less than optimal, the ATTO Technology H3 series will function in an x4 slot. In that scenario, I recommend no more than 2 active tape drives and no disk be attached.

An x4 slot is very capable of maintaining 2 3GbS devices, but starts to become a bottleneck if you attach additional active devices. In other words, you could have 8 tape drives physically attached to an H380, but you should not use more than 2 of them at the same time.

As far as the other part of the question, after all of the testing that we have performed, the ATTO Technology HBAs are truly the only HBA that will support tape devices properly under OS X.

HTH,
Tim
 
Ralph Wong said:
I'm on a stand alone computer and would only be backing up my own stuff to an LTO 3 drive, and I didn't see any packages that had BRU LE instead of BRU PE.
Click to expand...
Actually, you may want to consider the LTO-4 simply because the LTO-3 drives are getting scarce, and the actual pricing on new-stock LTO-3 SAS drive is only around $30 dollars different. And, you can use LTO-3 tapes with an LTO-4 drive. As for a BRU LE package, we're always willing to build what you want, so give our sales team a call and we'll happily put together an BRU LE-based solution. The predefined bundles are just to make it easier to see how things go together.

With that said, I am on Mac Pro with the Nehalem running OSX 10.5.8. I plan to put together an external LTO backup system. From what I understand so far, I would need to buy:

BRU LE software
HP LTO-3 920 external drive
ATTO SAS H380 controller card

Is there anything else that I am missing. The whole cable discussion got me thoroughly confused. Wouldn't the HP LTO 3 drive come with a cable to connect to a controller or is that wishful thinking?
Click to expand...
Unfortunately, it depends on who you purchase from. Since most IT shops are adding the tape drives to existing environments, HP usually doesn't include the SAS cable in their retail kits.

I was thinking of getting an H680 card since it would be nice if I could also connect ESATA drives to the card as well. The price difference doesn't seem all that bad until you factor in the price of the fan out cable. So to my understanding, if I buy the H680 card I could attach additional ESATA drives via the H680 card which I could not do with the H380, but I would have to spend around eighty dollars to buy a fan out cable in order to do that. Of course, if I have to buy an expensive cable anyway if none came with the drive, it might be worth while to get the H680 card instead of the H380.
Click to expand...
That's not a true assumption. Anything that you can connect to an H680 can be connected to an H380. Also, eSATA is not directly connectable and requires special cabling or a chassis designed to connect SATA drives to a SAS HBA. For example, we use the Sans Digital TR4X-B, 4 drive chassis for our test rigs. They run around $300 plus the cost of your drives and connect using a standard SFF-8088 to SFF-8088 cable to the H380 that we include in our bundles.

Any help simplifying the process of what actually is needed to get a basic setup working would be appreciated.

Thanks
Click to expand...

Give us a call. The sales team will gladly put you together a BRU LE / LTO-4 bundle and the REDUser discount will also apply.

Tim
 
Many thanks for your reply Tim. I'll look at an Atto card. I'm only using the SAS card for a single LTO-4 tape drive, so no problems regarding bandwidth.

I was under the impression a x8 card simply wouldn't work in a x4 slot, so your advice is very much appreciated.

Oddly that our paths should cross at this moment! As luck would have it, I'm looking at BRU for a larger project with an autoloader drive. I don't want to spam these forums with something not directly related, but do you have BRU forums, or can I contact you directly for some advice?

Edit: Wow, I just read the history of BRU. I'm ancient enough to remember having Fish Disks on my Amiga 500 back in the late 80s. A walk down memory lane!
 
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