ADSM-L

Re: Réf. : IBM vs. Storage Tek

2002-08-15 15:22:38
Subject: Re: Réf. : IBM vs. Storage Tek
From: Joni Moyer <joni.moyer AT HIGHMARK DOT COM>
To: ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU
Date: Thu, 15 Aug 2002 15:22:19 -0400
Thank you for the input!  Every bit of information helps and your
experiences help me to justify going with STK's 9840 solution.  Thanks!!!!

Joni Moyer
Associate Systems Programmer
joni.moyer AT highmark DOT com
(717)975-8338


                                                                                
                                             
                    Guillaume Gilbert                                           
                                             
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Hi Joni

What you wrote sums it up in terms of performance and reliability. I think
the same way you do as far as LTO goes. It is very good for small
enterprises and full backups.
But I don't think it fits TSM very well, espacially in a large
environnement like yours. Almost everyday I talk about it to our analysts
so I won't have to support a
large TSM server (400 clients) with those tapes. My 9840a's are very good.
The B's are even better. The Gresham solution is easier to implement in a
lanless backup
strategy. Compare the cost of DTELM licencing to that of TSM Library
Sharing. I don't have any figures but I bet the two are pretty close.

Sure with STK tapes you'll have more tapes but a Powderhorn can take it.
Before the 9840, we had over 3000 EE-tapes (1.6GB native) in our Powderhorn
just for TSM with
only 4 drives. I was doing reclamation by copying the tapes to disk storage
pool. With the 9840 I reclaim at 40% and do about 30 a day starting at 9:30
and it usually
finishes before I get off work. In 1 year I had 1 (one) tape failure and no
drive failures. That's pretty reliable. I'm thinking the 3590 is as
reliable.

Remember, you always get what you pay for.

Guillaume Gilbert
CGI Canada




Joni Moyer <joni.moyer AT HIGHMARK DOT COM>@VM.MARIST.EDU> on 2002-08-15 
09:29:48

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Objet :   IBM vs. Storage Tek

Hello,

I know I've asked about this before, but now I have more information so I
hope someone out there has done this.  Here is my environment for TSM.
Right now it is on the mainframe and we are using 3590 Magstars.  We have a
production and a test TSM server and each has about 13 drives and a total
of 5,500 tapes used for onsite and offsite tape pools between the 2
systems.  Two scenarios are being considered (either way TSM is being moved
onto our SAN environment with approximately 20 SAN backup clients and 250
LAN backup clients and will be on SUN servers instead of the mainframe)
Here is what I estimated I would need for tapes:

     3590 9840 9940A     LTO
     10 GB     20 GB     60 GB     100 GB
Production
Onsite    1375 689  231  140
Offsite   1600 800  268  161
Total     2975 1489 499  301

Test
Onsite    963  483  163  101
Offsite   1324 664  223  135
Total     2287 1147 386  236

Grand
Total     5262 2636 885  537

1. IBM's solution is to give us a 3584 library with 3 frames and use LTO
tape drives.  This only holds 880 tapes and from my calculations I will
need about 600 tapes plus enough tapes for a scratch pool.  My concern is
that LTO cannot handle what our environment needs.  LTO holds 100 GB
(native), but when a tape is damaged or needs to be reclaimed the time it
takes to do either process would take quite some time in my estimation.
Also, I was told that LTO is good for full volume backups and restores, but
that it has a decrease in performance when doing file restores, archives
and starting and stopping of sessions, which is a majority of what our
company does with TSM.  Has anyone gone from a 3590 tape to LTO?  Isn't
this going backwards in performance and reliability?  Also, with
collocation, isn't a lot of tape space wasted because you can only put one
server  per volume?

2. STK 9840B midpoint load(20 GB) or 9940A(60 GB) in our Powderhorn silo
that would be directly attached to the SAN.  From what I gather, these
tapes are very robust like the 3590's, but the cost for this solution is
double IBM's LTO.  We would also need Gresham licenses for all of the SAN
backed up clients(20).

Does anyone know of any sites/contacts that could tell me the
advantages/disadvantages of either solution?  Any opinions would be greatly
appreciated.
Thanks!!!!


Joni Moyer
Associate Systems Programmer
joni.moyer AT highmark DOT com
(717)975-8338







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