Hi everyone!

I know that I have asked questions about his before, but I am now looking
for individuals that have done this conversion and what
experiences/opinions you may have on this topic.  I was wondering if anyone
has gone from 3590 Magstar tape cartidges to LTO or 9840B or 9940A?  If so,
could you answer the following questions for me so that I can get an idea
of what your environment is like and if it is similar to mine?  Thanks for
any input!!!!  If you have gone from any tape device to LTO, 9840B or 9940A
please let me know of you experiences also.

We have 2 TSM servers (1 production, 1 test) that we will be moving from
the mainframe to SUN servers on the SAN.  We will be doing 8 LAN-free
backups.  We back up approximately 1 TB per night with backups and
archives.  We also have about 200 clients.  We currently have 3590 Magstars
and it takes about 1/2 - 1 hour to reclaim a tape that is 40% utilized.  We
don't mirror our DB/log volumes.  If you have any suggestions on a move
from the mainframe to a SUN server I would also appreciate this a lot!!!!
Thanks again!

1.  What are the sizes of the files that you back up?  Are they all small
files or do you also have large databases being backed up or archived?

2.  How much data are you backing up per night?  And also archiving?

3.  What is you maximum tape mounts per hour?  How many tape drives do you
use concurrently?

4.  How long does it take you to reclaim a tape that is about 50% full?

5.  Do you consider your type of media reliable?  How many bad tapes have
you had?

6.  How long have you had this type of media working with TSM?

7.  Do you share tape drives?  If so, what software do you use?

8.  How many clients do you have?

9.  Do you mirror your recovery log and DB volumes?

10.  How many drives do you have for TSM?

11.  What is your data compression ratio?

12.  Do you have high duty cycles?

13.  Is your TSM server on the mainframe, AIX, SUN, etc.?

14. Do you have any LAN-free backups on a SAN?

Joni Moyer
Associate Systems Programmer
joni.moyer AT highmark DOT com
(717)975-8338