Can I use tape drive with XEN VPS / Guest oses?

Posted on in Categories , , , , , last updated August 2, 2007

Q. I’ve CentOS 5.0 server running XEN kernel. VPS Guest is Linux distribution. How do I use tape drive with XEP Guest os?

A. You can’t use character devices such as tape drives in Xen guests. This is limitation of Xen. It doesn’t have the ability to export character devices to multiple guests oses.

However for backup you can use rsync or ftp server or NAS server.

Posted by: Vivek Gite

The author is the creator of nixCraft and a seasoned sysadmin and a trainer for the Linux operating system/Unix shell scripting. He has worked with global clients and in various industries, including IT, education, defense and space research, and the nonprofit sector. Follow him on Twitter, Facebook, Google+.

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  1. This is not, strictly speaking, true.

    Xen, if running in HVM mode, has the ability to export pci devices to specific domU’s. You could, then, export a (physical) scsi controller pci device to a domU; then, use it as you normally would.

    Or, perhaps rmt is for you (the remote tape device).

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