HP LTO-8 EXTERNAL TAPE DRIVE SUPPORT BY PROXMOX

[Abhijit Roy]

Hi All,

Can you tell me is proxmox support HP LTO-8 External tape drive, if yes is it possible to mount it on Centos7 VM.

 

[aaron]

How is it connected to the server?
It might be possible to pass it through to the VM.

 

[Abhijit Roy]

Actually We are Planning to bye HP External LTO-8 tape drive with a HP Server it will be connected through "HPE Smart Array E208e-p SR Gen10 (8 External Lanes/No Cache) 12G SAS PCIe Plug-in Controller" Card via external SAS Cable, My Plan is to install PROXMOX on that server and create a VM with Centos latest version and mount that drive to the VM, is it possible???

 

[aaron]

Since I don't have any experience with this exact setup I cannot guarantee that this will work. Because it is connected via SAS this guide can work for you. https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Physical_disk_to_kvm

The best is to build a test setup and see if it works for you.

 

[Abhijit Roy]

what is the procedure to mount LTO-8 tapes in proxmox, or what is the protocol to be identified tapes by proxmox????

 

[aaron]

If you pass through the device as described in the link of my previous comment the VM should be able to access it like it would be connected directly to the drive.

No mounting within Proxmox just passing through the drive to the VM. You then mount it in the VM.

 

[Benc]

what is the procedure to mount LTO-8 tapes in proxmox, or what is the protocol to be identified tapes by proxmox????

Proxmox is built on top of Debian, and therefore all normal mounting procedures would work for mounting LTO tapes into a linux system.
This includes volume management on the Host, or you can pass through a "volume" if your tape array can manage all tapes as a pool.

The more "safe" solution that we are planning on implementing is to attach the SAS card to the server's PCI riser, and then performing a PCI passthrough to a QEMU Virtual machine that is running Bacula/Bareos, and following the standard install documentation. We would not be mounting the tapes as proxmox storage. All mounting would be done inside the virtual machine instead.

This means that we could migrate the backup "server" to a new chassis, and only require a swap of the PCI card in order to change it's physical location.

 

[Abhijit Roy]

Environment which I am planning is I will install Proxmox in a HP Server, and that External SAS Drive of HP will be connected through an PCI SAS Card, and on that PROXMOX I will install Centos7 for backups transfer on tapes through NFS method from a remote server which is also based on PROXMOX, now please tell me I am thinking proper way or not.

Thank you very much for all your cooperation.

 

[Abhijit Roy]

Hi all please help, I have attached my lto8 external tape drive to the server it is detecting when I am doing lsscsi as /Dev/st0, but I couldn't pass it to VM Id 100 the tape drive is connected through sad card in pcie slot, can you please help

 

[Abhijit Roy]

Sorry it will be easy card

 

[Abhijit Roy]

Sas card

 

[Benc]

Shutdown vm # 100.

Open the hardware tab settings panel for your VM # 100.

add >> PCI Device

Select your PCI Card.

It should now appear mounted in your VM when you start it.

 

[Abhijit Roy]

it is saying iommu not found error, after adding that card and try to start that vm

 

[Abhijit Roy]

Exact output of lsscsi is as follows

[15:0:2:0] tape HPE Ultrium 8-SCSI J4DB /dev/st0
[15:2:0:0] storage HPE E208e-p SR Gen10 1.04 -

E208e-p is pcie card

 

[Benc]

Enable IOMMU as stated in the wiki page for PCI passthrough.

https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/PCI(e)_Passthrough

 

[Abhijit Roy]

how to do following staff

Required modules

add to /etc/modules

vfio
vfio_iommu_type1
vfio_pci
vfio_virqfd

 

[Benc]

Open the file /etc/modules with your preferred text editor.

Enter the module names in that list.

save the document.

 

[Abhijit Roy]

Is there any other way to mount that tape

 

[Benc]

Not into a virtual machine, no.

You need to pass through a PCI device the VM in order to mount a SCSI device in the virtual machine.

 

[Abhijit Roy]

Ok can you tell me in my case which one is the exact pcie id