AIX

I have 2 servers in my office which are p570 and p550. Both run under AIX 5300-07. And I only have 1 x SCSI Ultrium LTO3 Tape Drive. For syncronization purposes, I always backup p570 server's database and restore into p550 server.

And due to the frequent process of syncronization, I require to unplug the SCSI cable from p570 and plug in p550 and vice versa. This result to the loose of card as well as sometime cable is not attach to the card properly.

I would like to seek a permanent solution to handle this problem but I do not have budget to buy another Ultrium LTO3 Tape Drive for restoration purposes.

Thus, I would like to check whether there is device that act as a I/O Switch which will permanently attached cables to p570 and p550 as well as the Tape Drive and subsequently when I want to use the tape drive for p550, I will just turn the swicth to p550 and vice versa.

In addition, I would like to check with all the experts here whether there is other way to handle this problem.

Thanks.

---------- Post updated at 11:38 AM ---------- Previous update was at 10:07 AM ----------

In addition, I would like to listen to all of yours opinion on if I attach the Tape Drive to SAN Switch, will this affect the performance of the hard disk that using the same SAN Switch?

There are many ways in which you can keep the systems in sync
1 Using Rsync Copy from one system to the other directly
This also alows cloning of directories , exports and datafiles as required
2 Backup and restore using backup tools like Netback ( network backup )
3 Depending on your databse you can migrate date using tools that come with your databse ( datagard etc... )
4 Export and import data via network
4 Tape dirves can be made avable on both system via san and then using san backup tools or even ( tapeutil )
5 GPFS
6 then Depending on your storage you may be able to use storage mirror of some sort ( metromirror , flashcopy etc..)


Hope this helps