ADSM-L

Re: STK 9940B Tape Drive Exp with TSM?

2005-03-01 12:02:38
Subject: Re: STK 9940B Tape Drive Exp with TSM?
From: "Stapleton, Mark" <mark.stapleton AT BERBEE DOT COM>
To: ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU
Date: Tue, 1 Mar 2005 11:02:18 -0600
From: ADSM: Dist Stor Manager [mailto:ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU] On 
Behalf Of Hart, Charles
>Our management is asking us to look at converting our IBM 
>3592J to 9940B. (no comment)...  Most of our remote sites use 
>9940B drives with Netbackup, and in the past year we have seen 
>many 9940b drives replaced (10 out of 40) in the past year, 
>many tapes getting stuck etc...  I have heard from other 
>people who use 9940b's and have good luck with them so I'm not 
>sure if our 9940B issues are hdw or netbackup related.  
>
>With that said I have a couple questions for those of you 
>using 9940B's....
>
>1) 9940B Drives using ACLS / Gersham Reliable?
>
>2) Can we share a STK Silo with TSM and NBU. (Some of the 
>thinking is to do DR for some remote sites that have 9940B's)

My experience with 9940B drives (in a PowderHorn) has been that ACSLS
and Gresham are pretty reliable packages, but the 9940B drives
themselves are pretty high-maintenance items. The drives need a fair
amount of care and feeding (microcode updates, troubleshooting and log
analysis, etc.) that have to be done by a StorageTek engineer.

You can share an STK silo with multiple applications as long as you buy
Gresham's EduTape. The good news: with TSM version 5.3 you don't need
Gresham; native ACSLS sharing comes with 5.3. The bad news: you'll have
to buy Gresham anyway if you use NBU. WARNING: Gresham is *very*
expensive.

Why would anyone want to replace 3592s with 9940Bs? <shudder> That's
rather like replacing a decent lean-cut beef chop with top-of-the-line
dogfood.

--
Mark Stapleton (stapleton AT berbee DOT com)
Berbee Information Networks
Office 262.521.5627  

<Prev in Thread] Current Thread [Next in Thread>