[And Two Forum Pages Later...]  ;)

Very interesting discussions.  However, I have some direct comments/questions 
for Curtis here:

-> How do you deal with sites like mine, who have 'DBO Option Tier 5' (aka 
Unlimited adv_file) and actually use it as our primary storage?  With VTLs now 
licensed by size, I don't see EMC (or in our case Sun) 'trading in' one license 
for another while still keeping us happy - do they have an equiv 'Unlimited 
VTL' license?

And its nice to be able to just 'drop in' disk for a project or a specialized 
SN - its now just plain cheaper than looking at VTL for the near future; Just 
buy a x4500 and a $2K SN license, or use an existing x4100, $2K SN, and some 
older DAS disk (Sun 3000 series SATA) using ZFS raidz2.


-> There's another factor that revolves around the above license (and the VTL 
v. adv_file debate):  Timing.

I implemented the adv_file solution in mid-2004.  De-Dupe did not exist.  ZFS 
did not exist (and still doesn't, for what I need it to do *sigh*).  VTL did 
not (officially) exist.  And, arguably, 'Big Disk' as we initially implemented 
was not ready for prime-time either (it finally worked in 2006 when the disk 
array was swapped from PATA to SATA).

I'm curious if anyone else ended up in this situation.  For that matter, does 
anyone else here *have* a Tier 5 DBO?

Oh, and I personally can't be moved by 'bad VTL' stories so much, when three 
words will make STK's entire support department cringe:  Fully Populated 
BladeStore [12 Trays].  I'm pretty skeptical of all 'big disk' equally, no 
matter how nicely you wrap it.


-> What is the point of de-dupe when more than half your data coming in is 
pre-compressed, and is just likely to increase (especially when pre-compressing 
gets you 2-5x more data per tape than the average tape drive can do in 
real-time)?


--TSK

-----=====-----
Tim Kimball, Sungard/BRASS

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