When I attempted to do this I was informed by Spectralogic (one of the approved tape library vendors) and Netapp (including the product manager responsible for this "product") that this solution was basicaly a one-off using experimental code which wasnt even close to being released.
I was given several different stories, one of which was that it wouldn't be supported until a software release planned for September, >6 months after its availability was announced. At this point I have no idea when or if they'll ever be able to support this. They're saying that they have a "better" solution coming down the line more quickly than this one, but I've yet to hear any kind of details. I'll ping Netapp folks to see if anything has changed since last time we talked.
As far as I know, there still exists no sane backup strategy for multiple filers, unless you think having one tape library per filer or backing up multiple terabytes of data over the network and through some kind of backup management box is sane.
This makes me cranky. This also makes me want to invite all of the other vendors back in for a chat.
-Brian
Bruce Sterling Woodcock wrote:
NTAP recently announced that you could do this but only with a Vixel switch:
http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/000509/ca_quantum_3.html
I haven't seen anything official about what other configurations are/will be supported.
Bruce