Whenever we hear HSM, we think Archive.  This is since many HSM
implementations would have been better served by archiving the stuff and
deleting it rather than sending it to an HSM.

Someone did a study once that said that 90% of the stuff that went into HSM
never came out.  Lots of implications there, but this stat suggests it
should have been thrown away!

Another thing I've learned is that HSM is forever.  You will not be able to
realistically move from one HSM vendor to another.  I visited a site with 20
TB and over 20,000,000 files in a no longer supported HSM product.  There
was no physical way to get all of the stuff out their current HSM and into
another one.  No way (well perhaps way, but not without involving a team of
programmers and months of time).  They were seriously stuck.

Evaluate carefully.  I'm glad to see that Tivoli is addressing this problem
directly.  Hopefully this will provide future stability for the product.

Kelly J. Lipp
Storage Solutions Specialists, Inc.
PO Box 51313
Colorado Springs CO 80919
(719)531-5926
Fax: (719)260-5991
www.storsol.com
lipp AT storsol DOT com