Ahh, so it's the fact that they are LTO drives.  So as far as LTO drives
go then, what I am experiencing is "normal"? 


Mel Dennis

-----Original Message-----
From: ADSM: Dist Stor Manager [mailto:ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU] On Behalf Of
Zoltan Forray/AC/VCU
Sent: Tuesday, December 13, 2005 2:26 PM
To: ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU
Subject: Re: [ADSM-L] Normal # of failures on tape libraries

I agree.  My 3590's (both B and E1A models) have been through major
pounding, for many, many years, and like the Energizer Bunny, keep going
and going. Yes, they do need some repairs/maintenance, but considering
the
amount of data/mounts/tapes they go through on a daily basis, they are
like tanks. Never had a whole drive, replaced. Usually things like
cleaning brushes, sometimes R/W heads, 2-3 card-packs, stuff like that.

This in contrast to my !@#$%^&*  IBM 3583/3580 LTO2 drives, which over
the
1.5-years I have been using them, all 8-drives have been replaced, at
least once, some more.  I haven't kept strict tabs on them, but
considering I just had 3-replaced over the past 2-weeks, from my
experience, LTO2 drives are garbage.  They require weekly, if not daily,
attention.  The 2-LTO libraries have 300-tapes between them, the 3494
library with the 3590 drives has over 3700, with 400+ mounts a day !

FWIW, when I went to a "storage" show-and-tell-and-try-to-sell, the ADIC
folks told me they OEM their drives from IBM !




Richard Sims <rbs AT BU DOT EDU>
Sent by: "ADSM: Dist Stor Manager" <ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU>
12/13/2005 02:01 PM
Please respond to
"ADSM: Dist Stor Manager" <ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU>


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Subject
Re: [ADSM-L] Normal # of failures on tape libraries






On Dec 13, 2005, at 11:31 AM, Dennis Melburn W IT743 wrote:

> Our sites use ADIC Scalar 1Ks as well as one ADIC 10K.  The Scalar 1Ks
> have  4 LTO1 drives in each and the 10K has 34 LTO2 drives.  We
> experience occasional failures on these drives and have to replace
> them.
> My question is, is it normal for a site that has alot of drives to
> experience drive failures about every 1-1.5 months?  My manager is
> rather annoyed at the fact that it seems that we are constantly
> replacing drives even though it doesn't cause any downtime for our TSM
> servers while they are being replaced.  If this is a normal part of
> having tape libraries then that is fine, but I don't have enough
> experience in this field to say either way, so that is why I am asking
> all of you.

Customers with 359x drives (which are never replaced) would certainly
find that replacement frequency alarming; and from any perspective,
that's rather extreme. Your site may have periodic management-level
review meetings with the vendor, where a good explanation should be
required of the vendor. Your management might then specify that if a
resolution to the problem is not forthcoming, then they might abandon
that vendor for another. (A complication there is that ADIC has been
the OEM for some name-brand drive resellers.) Make sure they review
external factors for cause, such as bad power feeding the drives,
excessive contaminants in the local atmosphere, tapes coming back
from offsite after rough handling, etc.

In any site where drive replacement occurs with any frequency, I
would advise chronicling the serial numbers of all such drives. You
would like to believe that you are getting new drives as
replacements, where the serial number should be nearby or higher than
that being replaced - and that you don't find the same drive coming
back sometime later.

    Richard Sims