Hi Matti,

Funny that you should ask that question now. I have just spent the last few
days trying to get NetTape up and running. And that was after having spent
a number of weeks trying to get an installable copy of the installation
tape (the first 3 sets were unreadable by installp).

At this stage I have been able to get the nettaped process up and running,
but it required lots of trial and error. The documentation leaves quite a
bit to be desired.

The reason that we bought NetTape is so that we could share all 8 3590
drives in one of our 3494s between two different ADSM servers (both
RS/6000s). In the future, we hope to be able to do things such as write
ADSM database backup tapes to 3590s in a remote 3494. Our understanding is
that this will require both ADSM V3 and a later version of NetTape (both
due by the end of the year, I believe).

So, as long as NetTape does what we want, it is more than just hype. It
will mean that we will be able to make much more effective use of our 3590
investment. There are others benefits that we anticipate such as being able
get in a queue for a tape drive so that we can do things like DSMFMT while
there is a queue of ADSM requests for tape drives.

Hopefully tomorrow I will have ADSM using the 3590s via NetTape.

I will add another note when everything is up and running with some
(hopefully not too gory) details.


Trevor