We're doing just that.
Easy to set up if your offsite location is within fibre distance.

Only we are putting the VTL (primary pool) OFFSITE and the 3584 (copy
pool) ONSITE.

Why?

1) Tapes jam.  Drives break.  The 3584 is very reliable, but still
mechanical.  Easier to have it onsite, near us, to manage.  The VTL is
essentially lights out, so it will live offsite.

2) IF we have a disaster, having the VTL offsite means we can do DR
restores without being limited by the number of tape drives we have.
Cool idea, huh?  Means we only need 2 drives in our 3584.  Collocation &
tape mounts are no longer an issue.

And another cool thing:

3) We're even putting a spare Windows server offsite with the VTL, and
making it a backup domain controller.  TSM is already installed on it,
but inactive.  If we have a disaster, all we have to do is restore the
TSM DB.  We can start restoring files then to any machine we can get IP
connectivity to.  Our domain is still up, we don't have to recover AD.

I can hardly wait for the tornado!

Wanda Prather
"I/O, I/O, It's all about I/O"  -(me)



-----Original Message-----
From: ADSM: Dist Stor Manager [mailto:ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU] On Behalf Of
David E Ehresman
Sent: Friday, February 10, 2006 3:54 PM
To: ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU
Subject: Offsite library via fiber


We're thinking of a TSM upgrade that would include a VTL onsite library
and an IBM 3584 library for copy pool tape. We would locate the 3584 in
our offsite storage location and access it via fiber. The tapes would
remain in the 3584 since they would already be offsite.

Anyone have any experience with a setup like this?

Daivd Ehresman
University of Louisville