I have not well understood: you have not specified if the 3583 LTO library
is to be connected via a SAN Data Gw (for ex. an internal one).

Do you want to have your disk subsystem directly attached to the TSM
Server?

And about the library: do you want the library to be connected via SCSI to
the same TSM Server?

Unfortunately the SCSI solution can rapidly fill all the available slots of
your system and so you can experience some constraints for future
expansions of your system.

I ask you this because if you want instead a SAN based solution you can
have the FAStT disks from IBM (the 200 model for example) for about 85000 ?
(list price: 2.1GB, 2 FC connections, Dual Controller).

Is this price competitive with the list price of the ExaDrive SAN solution?
Does the Exadrive solution support AIX? Does the Exadrive solution have the
possibility to make a "flash copy" of the data (this feature could be
useful because may allow you to make backup while accessing your DB data)
and the changing "on the flight" of the RAID protection (useful if you want
to start with a RAID 1-10 protection ad then migrate to RAID 5 when your
disks are becoming full and you don't want to buy more capacity)?
I think these are some considerations you have to think of before
buying...................after, of course, the most important: budget!

Hope this helps.




Cordiali saluti / Best regards

Gianluca Perilli



Gianluca Perilli
Tivoli Customer Support
Via Sciangai n° 53 - 00144 Roma (Italy)



                                                                                
                                                       
                      Jeff Rogers                                               
                                                       
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                      Sent by: "ADSM:          Subject:  hardware questions 
before I buy                                               
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We have a small TSM system.  I'm looking to expand it.  Of course, I'm on
a budget.

Currently we are on an RS/6000 H70 with an IBM 3581 tape changer.  We have
almost no disk space available for disk storage pools.  The machine is
dedicated to running TSM.

I am considering adding the following

IBM 3583 with two LTO drives, starting out with an 18 tape capacity.  I'm
not too worried about this part of it, correct me if I'm wrong, but I
think this is a known performer.

Exadrive Diamond SCSI -> ATA Storage Array.  This piece of hardware comes
with a 30 day money back guarantee, and a three year warranty.  I can get
2 TB of disk for the price of about 200GB of IBM SCSI disk.  The company
web site is http://www.exadrive.com  Does anybody know anything about this
company, or this specific Storage
Array.    It plan to use it for disk storage pools for our nightly backups
(around 250GB) , which I will move to tape during the day.

-JeffR