SUMMARY
How to connecting a tape drive or tape library to the Unitrends appliance.
ISSUE
How can I attach a tape device to my Unitrends Appliance to use for Cold Copies?
RESOLUTION
For more information about which cold copy archive modes are supported by Unitrends by platform, see the following KB: Supported Cold Backup Copy Modes by Appliance Platform
For customers new to Unitrends, a Unitrends Physical Appliance of full rack depth or larger chassis with add-on Storage Adapter is required to support tape systems. Tape is supported on SAS or Fiber Channel on new systems*
You can connect a tape device to a UB deployed on metal** and some VMWare platforms***.
For Configuration of tape systems, see our Admin Guide or speak with a Unitrends Onboarding Engineer if you have purchased Unitrends SureCare with your new system.
NOTES
*LVD SCSI cards are no longer able to be sourced by our manufacturing partners and thus cannot be included in new units and are no longer available for sale. Customers with Existing SCSI tape support in older Appliances who may be trading up to new Unitrends appliances after Nov 2016 will require working with their tape vendor to convert to FC or SAS connections or more to Disk-based archive options to replace SCSI Tape.
**Metal UB, also known as Unitrends Backup for Linux or Linux Installable UB, was discontinued for new sale in November 2016. Customers with prior deployments remain supported. Customers wishing to have tape support for purchases after November 1 2016 will require physical appliances.
***Legacy UBs deployed on VMWare 4.x and older also continue to support tape but it is no longer possible to deploy a new UB to VMWare platforms below 5.1. VMWare itself discontinued tape support after 5.0. No other hypervisor has tape support.