We were in a similar situation with a 3494 and two 3590E drives. We
went with a VTL for the primary stgpools using the 3494 just for offsite
copypools and have been very happy with it. Most everything goes
straight to the VTL and during the night I do repeated backups of the
primary stgpools in the VTL to the copypool stgpool in the 3494. In the
morning one final backup from VTL to the 3494 followed by a DB backup
and I'm ready to send tapes offsite. Since the primary disk stgpools
were reduced to 1GB in size the migration time went to zip. We back up
about 1TB per night.
Milton
-----Original Message-----
From: ADSM: Dist Stor Manager [mailto:ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU] On Behalf Of
Richard Rhodes
Sent: Thursday, September 22, 2005 6:57 AM
To: ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU
Subject: Which Tape Technology?
Hi Everyone,
Currently our tape environment consists of IBM 3494 libraries with 3590H
(60gb) drives. It's possible that we may need to greatly expand our
environment with some new libraries and drives. This has brought up a
discussion about what tape technology we would use. Our environment
consists of a mix of large file backups (Oracle databases), small file
backups (Netware servers) and lots of stuff in between. If we have to
do this, I really can't see purchasing more 3590H drives with cartridges
that are only 60gb. I would think we would want to go to the newest
3592 drives or LTO2/LTO3.
What are your thoughts/comments/experiences with . . . . .
1) Given our mix of large and small file backups, would LTO tape drives
work as well as our current 3590's?
2) Does anyone have any experience using IBMs newest 3592 tape drives?
3) If LTO, is LTO3 the way to go, or stick with older LTO2?
4) Or, should we stick with 3590 drives?
With any of the new tape drives, I'm concerned with throughput issues.
The newest drives (3592 and LTO3) are so fast that I wonder if it
becomes a problem keeping data streaming to them. The capacity is
great, but if I can't keep them spinning I wonder if the new drives
could cause more problems than they solve.
Of course, another option would be a VTL or just local DISK on the TSM
server. We've done some initial pricing of some configurations (tape
libraries/drives/tapes, disk, and vtl) and so far tape is the least
expensive.
Just looking for others experiences with this kind of decision . . . .
Thanks!
Rick
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