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Status Not under consideration
Workspace IBM TS4500 Tape Library
Created by Guest
Created on Feb 7, 2024

RELATED IDEAS

Allow Lun masking for the control path

With the TS4500 and other tape libraries, the Library Control path (SMC Device) is presented via Lun 1 over one or more drives, while access to the drive (RMT Device) itself is provided using Lun 0. In a larger tape environment, there is usually a library manager which requires access to the control path and multiple library clients that only require access to the drives.

If a customer wants to limit access to the control path to only the library manager, then it is required to zone the drives providing the control path only to the library manager, and these drives cannot be used in the normal day-to-day operations anymore. This is, of course, a cost factor which will prevent most customers from doing this, which again leads to insecure environments since any server that is zoned to a drive having a control path can send SCSI commands to the library itself and mount, for example, tapes.

For this reason, it would be more secure to implement lun masking in the library firmware and only allow certain hosts access to the Lun 1/control path while other hosts can still access the drive itself using Lun 0.

Idea priority High
  • Admin
    CARLOS SANDOVAL CASTRO
    Reply
    |     Mar 20, 2024

    Thank you for your request regarding the ability to limit access to the control path to only the library manager. Unfortunately, this is not a trivial implementation and we are not seeing traction for this function with other customers.

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