Hi,

We are getting TSM 5.1 server, and want to run it on a linux box. Our
library will probably be the OVerland Storage Neo 4100 with LTO-2 drives.

We also want to have some spool space, and SCSI is the first thought. But
since IDE is getting cheaper and faster, I'm wondering if anyone has tried
out IDE as spool disks between the PC and the tape library. We could go
with either software or hardware RAID 0 (striping), which would further
increase the IDE performance. We also plan on upgrading our network to
Gigabit in a few months, so we don't want the spool disks to be the
bottleneck.

But since SCSI still outperforms IDE in relation to concurrent
operations, which the spool disks will most likely be doing (I.E.
writting from network, reading to tape), then maybe IDE is a bad idea.

Any thoughts?

Thanks in advance,

Alex
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   Alex Lazarevich | Systems Administrator | Imaging Technology Group
            Beckman Institute - University of Illinois
       alazarev AT itg.uiuc DOT edu | (217)244-1565 | www.itg.uiuc.edu
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