I like the Overland Neo. The upgrades are pretty much as easy as they say.
ADIC's product line is solid, but they don't use the standard SCSI command
sets (thus they won't work with open source robot control SW like MTX). But
given the ubiquity of their gear, you can pretty much count on ADIC working
with Legato SW.
When I was in the real world running a data center of my own about a year
ago, I tried to upgrade a 1 year old Scalar 100 that my predecessor had
configured with 2 DLT8000 drives. I wanted to upgrade to SDLT, but they
said I had to replace the whole library, mumbling something about a power
sled. Really ticked me off. They offered a "great" deal to trade it in,
but the price worked out to the same as what I could get for an Neo 4100
without a trade-in. Guess which brand I chose. I never bought ADIC again.
If upgradeability is an issue, get something in writing from them saying
that you can upgrade the drives for two generations, or if you have to
replace the library to do it, they will do so at the same cost as the
drives.
Getting down to the features of the two systems:
The primary difference is the size of the mailbox on the two machines. The
mailbox on the Scalar can take 10 tapes. There are only two mail slots on
the Neo (which can be configured as regular slots as well). If you do a lot
of tape swapping, you might do well to consider that.
I like the front panel of the Neo better than the Scalar. Seems more
intuitive to me. Plus, you don't have to try to do everything with four
buttons. Setting up the Neo on the network seems easier to me than the
ADIC, and once you get it on the network, the web GUI allows you to do robot
moves, see which slots are occupied by what tapes, upload firmware, and
download trace logs.
I've never had significant issues with support from either of them.
All in all, I usually recommend the Neo unless for some reason the customer
has a fairly big installed base of ADIC, or if they get jittery going with
anybody but ADIC for tape. If nothing else, the Overland is about 1/3
cheaper.
--paul
----- Original Message -----
From: "Paul Brears" <paul AT IFL DOT NET>
To: <NETWORKER AT LISTMAIL.TEMPLE DOT EDU>
Sent: Thursday, November 27, 2003 9:37 AM
Subject: [Networker] Any Overland Neo 4000 or Adic Scalar 100 library users?
> We've been looking round at various library options and I'd be interested
in any information about
> Overland Neo 4000 libraries.
>
> Any user stories (positive or otherwise) would be welcome. Are the
capacity upgrades as easy as they
> say?
>
> I'm also interested in Adic Scalar 100 library feedback as well.
>
> We'd be looking at using LTO-2 tape drives in either library.
>
>
>
> Paul
>
> --
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Note: To sign off this list, send a "signoff networker" command via email
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