Intel 7xx Servers User Manual

The current high-end tape drives (ULTRIUM-2 / ULTRIUM-3 and 3592-J / 3592-E) need to be placed
carefully on the System i buses and HSLs in order to avoid bottlenecking.  The following rules-of thumb
will help optimize performance in a large-file save environment, and help position the customer for future
growth in tape activity:

v Limit the number of drives per fibre tape adapter as follows:
y

For ULTRIUM-2

, 3592-J, and slower drives, two drives can share

 a fc 5704 or fc 5761 fibre tape adapter.

If running on a 2 GByte loop, a 3rd drive can share a fc 5761 fibre tape adapter

y

For ULTRIUM-3 and TS1120 (3592-E) drives, each drive should be on a separate fibre tape adapter

v Place the fc 5704 or fc 5761 in a 64-bit slot on a “fast bus” as follows:

y

PCI-X
™ In a 5094/5294 tower use slot C08 or C09.

™ In a 5088/0588 tower use slot C08 or C09.  You may need to 

purchase RPQ #847204 to allow

 the tower

to connect with RIO-G performance

™

In an 0595 or 5095 or 5790 expansion unit, use any valid slot

y

PCI

™

In a 5074/5079/5078 tower, use slot C02, C03 or C04

y

Note
™ “Ensure the fc 5761 is supported on your CPU type”

v Put one fc 5704 or fc 5761 per tower initially. On loops running at 2 GByte speeds, a second fc 5704 card can be

added according to the locations recommended above if needed. 

v Spread tape fibre cards across as many HSL’s as possible, with maximums as follow

y

On Loops running at 1 GByte (e.g. all loops on 8xx systems, or loops with  HSL-1 towers )
™ Maximum of two drives per HSL loop

y

On Loops running at 2 GByte (eg loops with all HSL-2 / RIO-G towers on system i systems)
™ Maximum of six ULTRIUM-2 or 3592-J drives per RIO-G loop. 
™ Maximum of four ULTRIUM-3 drives or TS1120 (3592-E) drives per RIO-G loop using the fc

5704 IOA. 

™ Maximum of two TS1120 (3592-E) drives per RIO-G loop using the 

fc 5761

 IOA

v If Gbit Ethernet cards are present on the system and will be running during the backups, then treat them as though

they were ULTRIUM-3 or TS1120 (3592-E) tape drives when designing the card and HSL placement using the
rules above since they can command similar bandwidth 

The rules above assume that the customer is running a large-file workload and that all tape drives are active
simultaneously.  If your customer is running a user-mix tape workload or the high load cards are not running
simultaneously, then it may be possible to put more gear on the bus/HSL than shown.  There may also be certain
card layouts that will allow more drives per bus/tower/HSL, but these need to be reviewed individually.

IBM i 6.1 Performance Capabilities Reference - January/April 2008

©

 Copyright IBM Corp. 2008