On Wed, 11 Jan 1995 14:30:40 EST Danczak, Mark said:
> We are a potential ADSM user. We are considering running ADSM under
> AIX and utilizing 8mm tape technology. I was wondering if anyone had
> any recommendations or suggestions concerning the Exabyte EXB-120, the
> Lago Datawheel, or any other ADSM tape issues.
>
> Thanks, Mark Danczak
> Sherwin-Williams
> medanczak AT sherwin DOT com
We run ADSM/6000 with a LAGO Datawheel. It works. You do have to manually
clean the tape drives regularly, or performance degrades. We clean them
once a week, and that seems to be frequent enough. The Datawheel has an
option to clean its own tape drives, but the problem with it is that the
tape drives don't signal that they need cleaning early enough in the game.
We would like to see ADSM automatically clean the tape drives for us.
I also wish the Datawheel had a third tape drive in it. We get by with 2,
but when a RECLAIM or MOVE DATA process is running, users cannot restore
files from tape. Since it takes awhile to move data off of an entire 8mm
tape, the users can end up waiting for hours. We're planning to run a
script regularly to handle this. It will check to see if any sessions are
in Media Wait. If they are, then it will cancel any running RECLAIM or
MOVE DATA processes. This will allow users to restore files from tape in
a more timely fashion. We'd like to see ADSM handle this itself, but we
should be able to do something with a cron-script.
We don't have any first-hand experience with the Exabyte robots. I'd like
to hear some from others, though. We have had no problems with the LAGO
robotics.
8mm technology is inexpensive. That's its primary feature. It's not as fast
or reliable as 3480/3490/DLT technology. To address the reliability issue,
we have written some scripts that we run daily to monitor our 8mm tape pool.
After a tape is mounted more than a certain number of times, it is flagged
(via a mailfile), and we replace the tape (using MOVE DATA). By doing this,
we hope to avoid any data loss caused by 8mm tapes wearing out.
Now... What's a good type of paint to use on the outside of my house?? ;)
..Paul
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