RE: Tape Library Issue

[rob@xxxxxxxxx]

We recently upgraded our firmware on our library, and the firmware on all 
the drives within that library.  Wasn't hard to find the download site to 
get this.  I downloaded it to a PC and used the browser interface to that 
tape library to upgrade these firmware's.  Wasn't too bad.

I suggest an IPL of all lpars, and the whole rack, if possible after 
upgrading firmware on these drives.

If that is too inconvenient then I recommend the following:
- any card that talks to a tape drive which uses an IOP (ie 5704 cards) 
then use SST to IPL the virtual IOP - not the physical IOP.
- any card that talks to a tape drive which does not use an IOP (ie 576B) 
then use SST to perform concurrent maintenance on the card and power cycle 
it.

Had to do this process just last week with IBM on the phone.  The only 
lpar I IPL'ed was a Linux lpar.  Trying to figure out it's version of SST 
wasn't worth it.  It wasn't in iprconfig (which is quite handy for disk 
issues, cache batteries, etc in Linux on Power).


Rob Berendt