Target and initiator mode configuration of tape drives for data transfer between source and destination tape drives

摘要

Systems and methods that substantially or fully remove a commanding server from a data path (e.g., as part of a data migration, disaster recovery, and/or the like) to improve data movement performance and make additional bandwidth available for other system processes and the like. Broadly, a network interface card (e.g., host bus adapter (HBA)) of a tape drive may be configured in both a target mode to allow the tape drive to be a recipient of control commands from a server to request and/or otherwise obtain data from one or more source tape drives, and in an initiator mode to allow the tape drive to send commands to the one or more tape drives specified in the commands received from the server to request/read data from and/or write data to such one or more tape drives.

主权项

1. A method for use in moving data from at least one source drive to at least one destination drive over at least one network, comprising:
receiving, at a first tape drive, a first command to read data from at least one source tape drive; obtaining, by the first tape drive, the data identified in the first command from the at least one source tape drive, wherein the at least one source tape drive is a second tape drive, and wherein the obtaining step includes sending, by the processor of the first tape drive over at least one network, a second command to the second tape drive to return data identified in the first command; and facilitating, by a processor of the first tape drive, storage of the obtained data on at least one destination tape drive identified in the first command.