We replaced our old HP OEM of the STK L700 in the 3rd quarter of last year with the Quantum i6000 and have been happy with
it. The capacity and speed of LTO5 compared with the older Ultriums allowed us to get less drives and still have faster backups. We were able to put two LTO3 in the library to allow us to read our older tapes. Also this model is partitionable so one can
allocate different resources to different masters.
We have seen oddities with the cleaning tapes complaining about failed memory chips – we’ve seen that 3 times now over the past 9-10
months. Quantum says the last one we sent them at their request had exceeded number of cleanings but I’m not sure I buy that given that their guide shows a completely different message for cleaning life reached. However, this isn’t a big enough issue
to sour me on the library itself.
From: veritas-bu-bounces AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu
[mailto:veritas-bu-bounces AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu] On Behalf Of
Len Boyle
Sent: Tuesday, August 02, 2011 3:01 PM
To: Jim VandeVegt; 'veritas-bu AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu'
Subject: Re: [Veritas-bu] Tape Library
Jim
That was a nice summary. I assume that these are Quantum tape drives? What you say about the tape drives w ith the control path and the serial interface
to the library is the same for IBM tape drives and an IBM 3584 tape library.
len
From: veritas-bu-bounces AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu
[mailto:veritas-bu-bounces AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu] On Behalf Of
Jim VandeVegt
Sent: Tuesday, August 02, 2011 2:41 PM
To: 'veritas-bu AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu'
Subject: Re: [Veritas-bu] Tape Library
We replaced an STK L180 with an i500 about 15 months ago. We went from LTO2 to LTO5. Quantum let us "rent" an LTO3 drive which we
used to copy all our long-retention images to the new media.
We looked at Spectra too. The Spectra came out a little more expensive and I thought their robot design with the terapacks was too complicated. That being
said I haven't heard about any big problems with them. Spectra also wasn't ready to release LTO5 at the time we were buying.
The i500 has been working out well for us. The robot's feed rate (how fast it will move tapes around the library & CAP) is not as fast as the STK units, but
it gets the job done. The slowness is rarely noticed when doing scheduled backups because we aren't standing there waiting on it.
Reliability on the i500 has been good. We had a loose ribbon cable on the robot carriage catch and stop it once that support fixed and believe triggered an
engineering fix as well to properly fold and protect the cable. Other than that a couple drives replaced that change out of the back pretty easy. We started out at the lowest service level because it is user-serviceable but got tired of waiting until the next
day for parts and upgraded to 7x24x4 service.
Only one design flaw I can speak of. The drive-to-library communication channel is rather slow. I think it is a 9.6 kbps serial connection. The robot does
not have its own fiber connection - it uses a separate LUN on one of the tape drives - they call it the control path. This means the operation of inventorying the robot in NetBackup uses that slow link. The inventory is maintained on the library, but pulling
the information using a drive. Another slow operation is pulling a drive log for support. You access the library GUI over Ethernet, and it has to pull the log across that slow link from the drive so you can download it. Takes 20-30 minutes.
From: veritas-bu-bounces AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu
[veritas-bu-bounces AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu] On Behalf Of Ulises Rodriguez [ulises.rodriguez AT wallst DOT com]
Sent: Tuesday, August 02, 2011 11:33
To: 'veritas-bu AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu'
Subject: [Veritas-bu] Tape Library
Hello All,
I have the opportunity to take on the project of replacing our old Storagetek L700. The time has come to make a choice either T200 Spectralogic library or Quantum I500. I have
been looking at everything as far as all the features/options. I just haven’t talk to anyone using any of these in other shops. Vendors always want to visit and talk with their happy clients. Just looking forward to get a general idea on everyone’s experiences
with these products.
Thanks in advance!
Uli
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