NetWorker tape drives in VTL environments

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Although most virtualisation systems allow configuration of tape drives inside a guest container, the use of such configured tape drivers has limited support.

For virtualisation systems that do not provide dedicated HBA capability, the use of tape drives in guest containers is not supported in production environments. These configurations can be used for testing or evaluation, but never to store production backups. Virtualized or pass-through drivers have a high interruption rate and are not suitable for sequential I/O. The use in production environments can cause a high number of SCSI resets.

This includes all editions of:

  • VMWare
  • Microsoft Hyper-V
  • Sun Solaris Zones
  • Linux Xen.

The use of tape drives is qualified and considered safe for virtualisation systems that allow for the full isolation of I/O.

NOTE: The physical I/O interface cannot be shared between guest containers.

These systems have the required capabilities:

  • Solaris LDom
  • IBM LPar
  • HP VPar/NPar

Pure backup-to-disk solutions, such as Advanced File Type Device is fully supported. Other support is based on qualification efforts. The EMC Information Protection Software Compatibility Guide lists the supported operating systems.