SAS virtual tape drive

摘要

A serial attached small computer system interface (SAS) expander for providing a virtual tape drive. The expander includes a virtual tape manager to generate a virtual tape virtual PHY capable of being part of a zone group wherein the virtual tape virtual PHY comprises drive bays which support disk drives for emulation of tape drives.

主权项

1. A serial attached small computer system interface (SAS) expander embodied at least in part in computer readable program code stored on a non-transitory computer readable media and executable by a processor, the expander comprising:
a virtual tape manager to generate a virtual tape virtual PHY capable of being part of a zone group, wherein the virtual tape virtual PHY comprises physical drive bays that support disk drives for emulation of tape drives, the virtual tape manager configured to receive from another expander a command to identify which physical drive bays to select to generate the virtual tape virtual PHY; and wherein the virtual tape manager to define a particular zone group for a particular physical drive bay associated with a given disk drive of the disk drives to prevent an initiator from targeting the given disk drive associated with the particular physical drive bay so that the initiator does not have direct access to the given disk drive associated with the particular physical drive bay but has access to a virtual tape drive associated with the particular physical drive bay, the particular physical drive bay associated with the virtual tape virtual PHY, and the virtual tape manager to, in response to the defining of the particular zone group for the virtual tape drive and assignment of the particular zone group to the initiator, generate a BROADCAST primitive sent to the initiator to allow the initiator to discover the virtual tape drive.