Hi Dan,

On Thu, 15 Mar 2001, Sixbury, Dan wrote:

>We recently replaced a library and it is the latest IBM LTO library with 8
>drives.  We don't have many clients backing up to it yet, but I was
>impressed with the speed that tapes were loaded and written to.  

Which library did you buy? 

We consider the IBM 3584 library, and I'll be glad to get information
about how reliable it is. Our current STK9710 gave us too much trouble
(very often drives go down).

>In your case it depends on budget and the direction you are tyring to go.  I
>would talk to your local vendor to verify if what the other person said was
>true about the newer drives not being able to write to the older tapes.  My
>experience has normally been that newer drives read and write to older
>tapes, but that older drives will not support newer tapes.  Of course I
>vaguely remember hearing something about a difference in compatibility with
>the newer DLT drives.  Once again, believe nothing and verify from the
>vendor.

If we (find the budget and) buy the 3584 library with LTO drives - then
they can't read DLT tapes, and I will have to keep the STK 9710 library
for those. If we go to another STK library with DLT8000 or SDLT - I will
be able to use the current tapes I have. 

The question is how well we can predict the future trend. My feeling is
that the LTO has a good chance to dominate the market, and it might be
worth it to make this change, although it means complexity (2 types of
media) and a bigger investment. But, "Predicting is hard, especially of
the future"...

>The next question would be, "Are you running out of available tapes for
>backups?" or Do you need additional drives for speed of backup and restore?

I am out of available slots. I have enough drives, and my backup windows
are big enough. My goal is to have in the robot all the tapes that are
in the database, so that we do not need to manually load them for
restores. I need at least 200 more slots as of now, and it is growing
fast.

>You may want to also re-evaluate your retention periods if that is possible.
>Possible meaning that the business requirments may not allow you to change
>retention periods.

I cannot change that.

Thanks for the answers,


        Miriam


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 Miriam Ben-Haim                 E-mail: miriam AT technion.ac DOT il 
 Unix Systems                    Phone : +972-4-8292177         
 Taub Computer Center            Fax   : +972-4-8236212          
 Technion - Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa 32000, ISRAEL  
                                                                         
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