How important is your data?  It matters not how reliable your primary
copy is if the location where it resides is physically destroyed by
water, fire, or (choose the disaster of your choice). I would never run
an enterprise backup storage systems without have offsite copies of the
data.

David Ehresman
University of Lousiville

>>> Keith Arbogast <warbogas AT INDIANA DOT EDU> 2/2/2007 11:22 AM >>>
We are starting the process of replacing our 3494 tape library. It
has ten 3590-E1A drives, about 2,500 cartridges, and supports two TSM
servers.

We have had preliminary talks with IBM about the 3584 ATL and 3592-
E05 drive technologies. A technical rep told us, more or less, "No
one is making copy pools with this new technology. They do not copy
tapes from primary storage pools to a copy pool."  I would never
consider this with our current tape technology, so it will be a giant
leap of faith to stop creating them no matter how good the new
technology is. However, people of my generation who think objects
that look like bombs might really be bombs are heaped with ridicule
by those who know they are merely cartoon characters.

Is this truly what most organizations are doing who use 3584 ATL's
and 3592-E05 drives?  We would be grateful to hear what others are
doing, and their reasons for stopping or not stopping writing to copy
pools?

Thank you,
Keith Arbogast
Indiana University