We got a new library last year. When we went through the govt bidding
process, we did our best to spec out the library to be a STK SL500.
When the smoke cleared, we ended up with a Quantum PX510. The cost was
about 70% of the SL500. The library was a bit temperamental at first
but was way better than the existing STK L80 it replaced. The L80 is
good, but we were just killing the SDTL220 drives in it. We were
running the drives 23 to 24 hours a day. The web interface to the
library is really powerful, support from Quantum has been great and
after a few firmware updates we are at a very very happy place now.
The Quantum PX5xx series seems to be fairly good and is easily
expandable to up to 400 slots and about 20 drives. I would recommend
at least a look at them.

Ken

On 1/10/07, Peter Viertel <Peter.Viertel AT macquarie DOT com> wrote:

An i500 with 36 slots  is the equivalent of a sL500 with 30 slots as
adic count the CAP slots in their marketing blurb.  So you are comparing
two 30 slot libraries in this case, the adic also has to steal slots if
you want autocleaning. The sun one has dedicated cleaning slots... So
the sun one is 30slots+5cap+some cleaning slots, the ADIC is 29
slots+6cap+1cleaning slot.

The storagetek one has a difficult gui. The adic one's gui is simple and
all web based, but gets hung sometimes.

On sun one has an optional front touchscreen but it's not needed really,
the adic one is smaller but comes standard, you need it to load tapes.

The storagetek one is in my opinion built a lot more sturdy that the
adic.

If you power off an ADIC without doing a controlled shutdown, ADIC say
this will void your warranty. But nothing bad happens to a sun one if
you do that.

The sun firmware for SL500's was awful until 3 months ago - it is now
appearing to be stable and all the features are present now at least (eg
SNMP, auto cleaning, environment monitoring, firmware updating all were
not functioning via the GUI for about the first 18 months after the
product went on the market) (rev 1092 is the good version).

The ADIC one supports SNIA SMI-S integration so your SAN guys can
monitor it and administer it with standards based tools. The sun one may
have this one day, but no idea when that may be.

Depending on how much of a sun shop you are, the adic one is probably
more expensive than the sun one.




-----Original Message-----
From: EMC NetWorker discussion [mailto:NETWORKER AT listserv.temple DOT edu] On
Behalf Of David Dulek
Sent: Thursday, 11 January 2007 6:39 AM
To: NETWORKER AT listserv.temple DOT edu
Subject: [Networker] New LTO 3 Library

I am looking at getting a new library with 2 LTO-3 drives.  My currently
options are a ADIC i500 (36 slot) and a StorageTek SL500 (30 slot).  I
am looking for pros and cons on these two libraries to help me determine
which direction to head in.

Thanks.

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