On Mon, Apr 07, 2003 at 10:56:33AM +0200, Toralf Lund wrote:
> Has anyone used Amanda with the Sony "LIB-81" AIT library?

If you're looking for an AIT library I can't recommend the Overland Data
LibraryPro products enough.  We looked at the Sony LIB-81, LIB-152 and
LIB-162 products when making our most recent purchasing decision and
decided instead to go with an Overland LibraryPro.  All of the reviews
of the Sony products we came across warned of overtly slow and flimsy
robotics.  Our Overland library has been rock solid.  It's also nice
that it has a removable 19-tape magazine rather than an internal
carousel like those Sony 1/2U products.  Also nice is the fact that if
the 19-tape/2-drive capacity becomes too little for our needs I can buy
additional LibraryPro modules and add them to the SCSI chain and it
remains addressable as one logical library.  You can do this with a
whole rack full of these libraries and there is a tape elevator
available to ferry tapes back and forth between different modules if
necessary as well.  With the LIB-81 if you ever need more than an 8-tape
capacity you either have to stand in front of the thing every N days and
change tapes through the mail slot (since you can't pull the whole
carousel out) or dump the whole unit and buy a bigger library.  It's
nice to know I can upgrade my capacity on a whim if we outgrow our
19-tape AIT3 cycle, either through additional LibraryPro modules or
additional magazines which allows me to swap all 19-tapes in less than a
minute.  It's a bit more expensive outlay upfront but honestly I think
you'll be much happier if you go with a better product.  That 1U
magazineless device may grow tiresome rather quickly.

HTH,

Brandon D. Valentine
-- 
Systems Administrator
Center for Structural Biology
Vanderbilt University