[Networker] Phasing out tape media with new media

Is there anyone else on this list who is in a position where you haveto upgrade tape media, especially those who need to replace Sony S-AIT1 media which is being EOLed next September? If so, you are in thesame position I am in where you will have to look at options to phaseout S-AIT1 media next year. I am wondering what approaches you areconsidering.

In my environment, I have a Sony PetaSite CSM-200 tape library with14 S-AIT1 drives. We have one base cabinet (of course) with 12 tapedrives, then tacked onto that is a 200C cabinet that's all tapeslots, then on the end is a 200D cabinet with two drives in it, butprovisions to add 10 more. All 14 drives are wired into a Solaris 9server via a fibre channel switch. The Solaris 9 server is about tobe replaced with a faster server running Solaris 10 and we plan towire in another server to facilitate disk-to-disk-to-tape backupslater this month. Out of the total slots in the tape library, 11 arereserved for cleaning tapes, 176 have yet to be filled with tapemedia, and the other 751 slots have tape media in them. These tapesare not sent off-site because the tape library is in a separatebuilding from where the servers that are backed up to it are located.

So I am thinking of recommending getting a new 200D cabinet thisfiscal year with as many S-AIT2 drives as our budget will allow; butat least two for starters. What I want to do is partition thatcabinet off from the other three cabinets and hook a storage node upto it and use just that cabinet and storage node to back up to S-AIT2media. This will avoid the age old problem of mixing different tapemedia in the same tape library.

My plan for the original three cabinets is to continue using the S-AIT1 media in them until they stop working and Sony refuses tosupport that media any more, then replace them with S-AIT2 media.This will allow us to phase out S-AIT1 to S-AIT2 over a period of atleast two fiscal years, which is a big deal for us due to the weirdway that budgets are structured here.

I am wondering what approaches others are taking. This same questionapplies to non-Sony media such as going from LTO-2 to LTO-3 or LTO-4.


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