Bill,

I am presently implementing the S2100-ES and S2100-DS VTLs by Sepaton
which are also TSM certified.  While at present I am using them as
directly fiber attached devices to my TSM server, I chose a VTL solution
over a DASD solution because: (1) I wanted to preserve the ability to do
a LANFree back-up in the future; (2) the VTL offers compression without
any performance hit to my TSM server or clients.  As far as costs are
concerned, sure you are paying something for the VTL layer, but
compression decreases that cost, besides TANSTAAFL (There Ain't No Such
Thing As A Free Lunch).  We were faced with the need for a major
expansion and sticking with the tradition tape with a disk stgpool front
end would have been very expensive.  Give me a month or two and I should
be able to report on life with a TSM and VTL.

H. Milton Johnson