We are a reseller of the Qualstar product so have some experience and biases
with it.  I'll share what I know and you can add the appropriate grains of
salt.

We've installed a number of these guys on NT servers with great success.
The library in terms of load and unload speed and tape drive speed is very
fast, comparable or faster than 3570 libraries we've dealt with (we've
installed a bunch of these as well).   AIT2 support is not available in
3.1.2.41, but is supposed to be available with V 3.7, but I don't know that
for sure and have not tested it.  We will be testing that soon, soon as I
find the software (see earlier note...).

I'm installing a large Qualstar on an AIX server starting October 18 so I'll
have much more detail to share then.  I anticipate no problems!

The usual library things apply: make sure you have the correct interfaces
(the Qualstar stuff ships, usually, with LVD so make sure you have the
appropriate controller), cables and terminators.  Other than that, no
weirdness that I'm aware of.  This is a very solid product, and you are
right, the price is hard to argue with.  At that price, you can afford to
over configure the library, which is almost always a good thing to do.

Thanks,

Kelly J. Lipp
Storage Solutions Specialists, Inc.
PO Box 51313
Colorado Springs CO 80949
719-531-5926
www.storsol.com
lipp AT storsol DOT com