Dell PowerVault TL2000 - Manual (Page 2)

Dell PowerVault^*^ TL4000/TL2000 Failover Guide
What is Failover?
Failover is an optional feature available for the Dell PowerVault ™ TL4000 and TL2000 Tape libraries.
Failover is designed to provide automatic path failover to a preconfigured redundant path in the event
that a host adapter or control path drive is lost without aborting the current job in process. Failover
provides error recovery on an alternate path when a permanent error occurs on the primary path. The
failover event is enabled by the tape library and handled by the device driver making it transparent to
the running Backup Application.
There are two types of Path Failover, Data Path Failover (DPF) and Control Path Failover (CPF). They are
closely related however the difference is that DPF is an automatic failover support for the transfer of
data, which provides error recovery for systems connected to tape drives while CPF is an automatic
failover support for the transfer of commands to move tape cartridges. Please refer to the Failover
supported configuration sections of this document for examples of different configurations that can be
constructed.
Dell PowerVault™ TL2000/TL4000 Configuration Support matrix
The configuration matrix section provides a quick reference to drive configurations that support failover
in a Dell PowerVault™ TL2000 or TL4000 library.
Important Note: Failover is not supported for any configuration containing LT03 drives
Drive LT03 Drives LT04 Drives LT05 Drives
Supported
Drive
Failover
Support
Supported Failover
Drive Support
Supported
Drive
Failover
Support
SAS Full Height Yes
SAS Half Height
Yes No
Yes ^ No Yes Yes*
Table 1: Dell PowerVault™ TL2000 Supported Failover Configuration Matrix
*Requires a Dell PowerVault™ TL2000 library configured with two LT05 Half Height drives
2 | P a g e 1 2 / 3 1 / 0 9 v e r s i o n 2 . 0
Always refer to www.dell.comXsuDPort for latest documentation and updates