I have been looking at Overland also. Their libraries are very aggressively
priced in the midrange storage market against the ADIC and STK libraries.
The maintenance prices are certainly better and the scalability is better as
well. In my research I found that Sybase uses them in their own data centers
and Microsoft uses them in a facility that is used for demonstrating that
Unix systems can migrate to Microsoft. There were numerous other
organizations using Overland libraries, but I thought I would only mention a
couple. I spoke to several references that were provided, without the vendor
on the phone call, and found no issues. Several references were using Tivoli
with Overland libraries. 

My reseller was very forthcoming with information, details, quotes,
references, site visits, etc. 

Eric


-----Original Message-----
From: Alexander Lazarevich [mailto:alazarev AT ITG.UIUC DOT EDU] 
Sent: Monday, March 24, 2003 9:08 AM
To: ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU
Subject: Re: SV: overland tape library?

This sounds real good.

The Overland Neo 4100 comes with 3 year warranty, 1 year of that with same 
day on site service. After that I'm pretty sure I can service the thing 
myself. After the 3 years is up, the maintanance contract, through 
Overland, is pretty well priced.

Thanks for the feedback,

Alex
---                                                               ---
   Alex Lazarevich | Systems Administrator | Imaging Technology Group
            Beckman Institute - University of Illinois
       alazarev AT itg.uiuc DOT edu | (217)244-1565 | www.itg.uiuc.edu
---                                                               ---

On Thu, 20 Mar 2003, Kjell Svensson wrote:

> Hi Alexander!
>  
> I´ve used some older Overlands together with TSM, with no greater
difficulties than with other brands.
> Also I have used a LOT of Cpq/HP MSL-series, both with SDLT and LTO, which
is actually the Overland 2000-series and I really, really like it,
especially equipped with LTO-drives.
> The 4000-series is the same machine with a bigger housing, so in my
opinion a great machine!
>  
> One concideration though is the availibility of support for the hardware,
a very important issue you´d be wise to check out carefully before deciding.
Sometimes the more expensive license-manufactured brands just makes more
sence in the long run.
> 
>         -----Ursprungligt meddelande----- 
>         Från: Alexander Lazarevich [mailto:alazarev AT ITG.UIUC DOT EDU] 
>         Skickat: on 2003-03-19 20:23 
>         Till: ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU 
>         Kopia: 
>         Ämne: overland tape library?
>       
>       
> 
>         Hey, 
> 
>         Does anyone use the Overland Storage Neo 4100 or 4200 LTO-1 tape
library 
>         with TSM 5.1 server? 
> 
>         We are upgrading our tape library and our ADSM server (3.1 ->
5.1), and 
>         are trying to decide what library to get. We've been looking at
the IBM 
>         3583-L36 Tape Library, which uses 36 LTO-1 tapes, up to 7TB
compressed 
>         capacity, with two LTO drives, which is gonna cost about 36K. 
> 
>         But I recently found out about Overland storage which sells a
product 
>         called NEO4100, with 3 LTO-1 drives, 60 tape slots, up to 12TB
capacity 
>         compressed, which sells for about 30K. 
> 
>         So it seems like for 6K less we can get almost twice the capacity,
with an 
>         extra drive! That extra drive would totally kick butt. But if
Overland 
>         hardware sucks and breaks and doesn't work well with TSM 5.1, then
screw 
>         it. 
> 
>         Any comments? 
> 
>         Thanks in advance! 
> 
>         Alex 
>         ---
--- 
>            Alex Lazarevich | Systems Administrator | Imaging Technology
Group 
>                     Beckman Institute - University of Illinois 
>                alazarev AT itg.uiuc DOT edu | (217)244-1565 | 
> www.itg.uiuc.edu 
>         ---
--- 
>