A combination of a router for storage traffic and an MPE/iX network backup solution will be bringing Storage Area Networks (SANs) within reach of e3000s, using high-speed fiber optic links.

Crossroads Systems’ CrossPoint 4250 storage routers (www.crossroads.com, 800.643.7148) have been tested by the vendor with HICOMP America’s (www.hicomp.com, 281.288.7438) HIBACK software. HICOMP’s Denys Beauchemin says the combination is the first fiber-to-SAN library link for the HP e3000.

HP e3000s still don’t have a Fibre Channel host bus adapter card, so until the hardware and software combination emerged, few options existed to attach a 3000 to a Fibre Channel SAN. SANs, a relatively new concept in datacenter management, provide storage which many different types of servers can share across an enterprise. SANs differ from network-attached storage in that they provide their own network dedicated to storage traffic.

Around-the-clock e3000 sites like car reservation companies or e-commerce ventures have a need for data restore capabilities that can happen in less than a minute. Libraries bring this capability to e3000 customers, so long as they can be controlled directly from e3000 software.

Crossroads products route large packets of data, rather than small messaging traffic. The company’s devices are resold by HP as the SureStore 2100 line of routers, and are also resold by StorageTek, Dell and Fujitsu.

HP recently released its Fibre Channel Distancing solution for the e3000, but that device is only an SCSI-to-Fibre converter. A Crossroads router runs intelligent applications such as third-party copy and LUN management that a converter cannot handle, according to Crossroads application engineer Stan Worth.

SANs may be gaining in favor in HP’s strategies, after it announced a major reorganization of its storage group that consolidated six product divisions under a single umbrella group called the HP Storage Organization.

Crossroads’ storage routers, when fully tested and qualified by HP, will make it easier to share tape libraries across HP 3000s, or in enterprises where the HP 3000 shares datacenter space with large IBM mainframes or Unix systems. The HICOMP solution gives systems administrators control of the libraries through the Fibre Channel network from the e3000, using a Windows client as the interface for restores as well as scripting backups.

Adding the Fibre Channel element gives companies a way to situate libraries miles away from servers, to share the resource more easily. “You can get yourself a library and keep it in a near-line environment,” Beauchemin said, “but you can have it off-site.” Near-line storage lets backups be available within a minute, selected from storage libraries using the HIBACK software.

“You go across these routers and do your backups to the libraries, and you don’t have to worry about taking the backups off-site,” Beauchemin said. Single-mode Fibre Channel can place devices 10 kilometers from servers, and they can be even further away using Fibre Channel switches. SCSI peripherals can only be about 70 feet from the servers. Near-line backups also eliminate the need for operator intervention to load tapes.

Larger e3000 shops will be able to implement strategic backup devices more easily with the combination of the HIBACK solution and the Crossroads storage routers, Beauchemin said. “They’ll be able to be used by all the systems,” he said of the libraries. “It’s not something you want to access over the LAN, because you’ll use up that 100 megabits [of bandwidth] real fast.”

For example, a StorageTek 9740 library with 2,000 35-70Gb DLT IV tapes in it would be used as a strategic storage device, sporting multiple terabytes of capacity. At a cost of about $500,000, this device needs to stay in heavy service, shared by as many of the enterprise’s systems as can be linked to it. This is where the Crossroads routers will help bring the e3000 into the environment, by providing Fibre Channel links.

A primary target for the HIBACK/Crossroads combo is HP 3000 shops running alongside large IBM mainframes. StorageTek is a popular choice among the IBM installations, including e3000 sites such as Hertz auto rental headquarters.

At the Crossroads development lab, Beauchemin showed off how an HP 3000 using a single-ended SCSI card was connected to a two-drive DLT library through a Crossroads storage router. A SHOWDEV command identified the robot and each of the tape drives inside the library. A utility included with HIBACK talks to the robotic changer using direct commands, but the backup software controls the library without command line intervention. Requesting a restore of a file on that library through HIBACK’s Windows client resulted in the file being retrieved using the robot from one of the DLT drives.

Few e3000 sites do backups with a GUI front-end, he added; these processes are scheduled. But restores do go through a Windows interface, another part of the software demonstrated in the Crossroads lab.

“To the 3000, this library is just another device that happens to be somewhere else,” Beauchemin said.

Without the ability to control the library’s robots, HP 3000 managers will still be able to use the Crossroads routers and the offside storage. But human intervention would be required to load the tapes needed. “To be able to have access to the backups at any time, you need a library manager,” he said. “We’re the only ones who do that.”

The combination of the router and the HIBACK solution lets multiple systems back up at the same time, he added. “With one of these routers you can have multiple 3000s doing their backups simultaneously through a single piece of fiber,” he said. Crossroads routers offer as many as four SCSI ports to one Fibre Channel port.