Hello all,

I am trying to determine what would be the best tape solution for our ARAN
(Automatic Road ANalyzer) van data system.  Basically, huge amounts of jpg,
mdb and xls data is generated (possibly to the order of 700G per week for
20 weeks, and 20G for the remainder of the weeks).  This data will be
staged to a 1.55 TB disk array.  The customer wants to be able to access
the current year's data and the preceding year's data.  The "Terabyte"
server and two or three processing workstations will be on a private
fiber/GigE network, connected by a Catalyst 3550-12G switch.

Having only actually experience with 3590 and 3570 drives, I was hoping
that someone with experience would be able to give me an opinion (nobody on
this list, right ;-) as to which tape technology would best suit their
situation -- small footprint, hold 5-10 TB of data to start, scalable, fast
access, fast read and write.  Money is an object, but for this exercise
let's just keep it an abstraction.  I had originally thought a 3584 with at
least 3 drives would be a good start, but then I started looking at the
AIT, whose access time beats the pants off of LTO, and thinking that would
be a better solution.

I had briefly thought about HSM, but the enormous number of files and
directories makes it sound like a really bad idea to me.  Any thoughts?

I'd also appreciate any ideas about what kind of x86 box would be suited
for the TSM server for this system.  My only experience sizing servers is
with enterprises and RS/6000 servers (I can spend a million here and there
for "my" stuff, but this customer has already spend 1.2 million on this
"turnkey" solution, and isn't going to be real happy to hear that for them
to get their stuff to work and have backups and DR, they need to spend an
additional $100,000, but OTOH, that's just deserts for having left IS out
of the loop in the purchase in the first place.)

TIA and have a wonderful Friday!

lisa