Attaching IBM 3592 tape drives to a SAN

Hi everyone,

Here's the deal:

Although we're reasonably mature SAN users ( EMC storage, EMC (Brocade)
Directors, IBM pSeries AIX servers ), attaching tape to our SAN is
altogether new for us.

In case you're not familiar, the 3592 uses native 4Gb fibre channel
connectivity ( 2 ports - and hence two WWNs - per drive )

I've provisioned 4 new HBAs on our AIX LPAR ( TSM server ) which are
dedicated to tape ( four others are already available for disk ), but that's
the only "best practice" that's quoted widely.

Has anybody out there already implemented something similar - and can
suggest any best practices based on real world experience ?

I'm thinking of things such as:

- Hard wiring port speed vs. autonegotiate
- Optimal switch port selection ( same blade ? same ASIC ? Combine tape and
HBA connections on the same ASIC?, or not ? )
- Zoning - should we follow ( EMC's ) recommendation of only one HBA per
zone - as with HBAs for disks ?
- AIX-specific issues
- TSM-specific issues

Any thoughts would be most welcome.

Many thanks,

Nick,
Cardiff,
UK