On May 19, 2010, at 1:21 AM, Steven Harris wrote:

> Hi All
> 
> I'm looking at a Spectralogic T950 tape library instead of another Sun
> one to replace our aging Sun L700s
> 
> Has anyone good or bad stories to tell about this?  How does the
> user-replaceable spares offering work in practice? Are the tetrapaks
> robust or do they break easily?
> 
> Is configuration and partitioning simple and straightforward?

It's been a couple of years since I worked with one, but we used one as a 
remote tape library locked away in a wiring closet across campus. 

We didn't do any of our own servicing, and I don't think we partitioned the 
library at all, but the tetrapaks were just fine. 

We had a period when, as I recall, the library would start to experience 
intermittent hangs. Shortly before I left that employer, SpectraLogic flew 
someone out who determined that a good realignment would fix the problem; she 
was right. (That may have been related to us physically moving the library on 
our own from one wiring closet to another a couple of hundred yards away. I'm 
not saying it was, but I have to wonder.)

SpectraLogic was moving customers to SuperDAT drives to IBM LTO drives as I 
moved away from that shop. That's been more than two years; I presume they're 
stable on their drive choice now. 

Six months ago, when my current employer was getting ready to get off a 
particular virtual tape library technology, I would have been thrilled if we'd 
gone to T950s as our library type. I have good memories of the one I used. 
(Instead, we simply changed virtual tape library families, but that's for 
another day.)

It's hard to beat the density of a T950.

Good luck,
Nick