Release notes for IBM Spectrum Protect device support Version 8.1

IBM Spectrum Protect™ device support for V8.1 is available. Compatibility, installation, and other getting-started issues are addressed.

Description
Announcement
Supported devices
Device driver requirements
Library information
Updates, limitations, and known problems

Description

This document includes information about IBM Spectrum Protect V8.1 device drivers.

An authorized program analysis report (APAR) is a request for the correction of a defect in a supported release of a program supplied by IBM. For a list of resolved APARs, see APARs Fixed in IBM Spectrum Protect device driver Version 8.1.

Announcement

IBM Spectrum Protect device support for V8.1 is announced as part of the IBM Spectrum Protect family of products announcement. The announcement for these products includes the following information:

Detailed product description, including descriptions of new functions
Product-positioning statement
International compatibility information

To search for the product announcement, complete the following steps:

Go to the product announcement website.
In the Search for field, enter the product identifier (PID) for your product. The PID for IBM Spectrum Protect is 5725-W98.
In the Information Type field, select Announcement letters, and click Search.
From the Search in list, select Product Number.
Optional: In the Refine Your Search pane on the left side of the window, select the country where you reside.
In the Sort by section, select Newest first.

Supported devices

For information about supported devices and hardware for IBM AIX® and Microsoft Windows systems, see Supported devices for AIX and Windows.

For information about supported devices and hardware for Linux systems, see Supported devices for Linux.

Device driver requirements

Host bus adapter requirements: For best results, connect tape drives and tape libraries to the system on their own host bus adapter. Do not share the host bus adapter with other device types, such as DISK or CD.

Maximum number of devices that are supported by IBM Spectrum Protect device drivers: For information about the maximum number of devices that IBM Spectrum Protect device drivers can support on each operating system, see technote 1364225.

Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) device support: SAS devices can be used on some operating systems and architectures. For information about operating systems and architectures for SAS devices, see technote 1396706.

Running the IBM Spectrum Protect passthru driver with a non-root user ID on Linux operating systems: For information about how a non-root user can use devices with the IBM Spectrum Protect passthru driver on Linux, see technote 1321130. Use option -g or -a of the device autoconf utility to ensure that non-root users can use devices that are configured with the IBM Spectrum Protect passthru driver. Use option -g to add read and write permissions for groups to the SCSI generic driver (sg) device files. Use option -a to add read and write permissions for all users to the sg device files.

Library information

IBM Spectrum Protect Extended Edition is required for a library with greater than four drives or greater than 48 storage slots.
The element addresses of the storage slots might not directly correspond to the storage slot numbers. This fact is important because the IBM Spectrum Protect server always references storage slots by element addresses, not storage slot numbers. For element addresses, see the library configuration page for each library.
For a library with multiple drives, a drive element address is required for the DEFINE and UPDATE DRIVE commands. However, if the library reports drive serial numbers, you can specify ELEMENT=AUTODETECT, and the element address is not required.
For the procedure to configure the autochanger and each drive in the library separately, see Configuring and managing storage devices.

Updates, limitations, and known problems

Updates

Some devices that were supported by previous releases of IBM Spectrum Protect are no longer supported by the IBM Spectrum Protect V8.1 server. For the latest list of supported devices, see the following links:

To search for the latest updates, limitations, and known problems, which might include additional items, see Updates, limitations, and known problems for IBM Spectrum Protect V8.1 device support.