ADSM-L

Re: Optical vs. Tape

2002-01-16 16:15:09
Subject: Re: Optical vs. Tape
From: asr AT UFL DOT EDU
Date: Wed, 16 Jan 2002 16:12:22 -0500
=> On Wed, 16 Jan 2002 12:53:11 -0500, "Denis L'Huillier" <dlhuillier AT 
PERSHING DOT COM> said:

> I was offered the use of 4 3995's that were being used on the Mainframe for
> an application which has been retired.
> Do I want them?

"Free" is the only way I'd take them.

Keep in mind that a C68 3995 is still only 1.3TB, fully decked out.  For that
you pay a -lot- of floor space.  You could satisfy that with used 18G SSA
DASD, for under $100,000, and have it all RAID-5 with a hot spare for each 15
disks.

If you feel like living dangerously (or using copy pools) you could skip the
RAID and the hot spares and satisfy that space req for ~$76,000

We've got a 3995 with 2.5G drives, and for just about every upgrade we might
make to it, it would be cheaper to replace the thing than to upgrade it.  We
use them for heirarchical storage.

> I am currently working on an Archive solution- could these be beneficial?

The big advantage of 3995 libs over e.g. 3494 is that you traditionally have
many more mount points, and mount/seek time is much much lower.

So, if it's a gift horse, then take them: they're a nice middle ground betwixt
disk and tape.  But don't skip the copy pools (the media -do- fail) and don't
put any additional funds into the technology.


Allen S. Rout
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