On Tue, Oct 11, 2005 at 08:54:20AM -0400, Richard Rhodes wrote:
> Do you have the HA1 high availability option on your 3494 or 3584 library?
>
> If you have HA1, do you think it was worth the money?
> How often has your robot failed?
>
> We have a couple 3494 libraries with the HA1 option.  In 3-4 years of
> service
> the spare robot only was needed a couple times.    As we think about
> getting
> another library we're asking ourselves if it's worth the price and floor
> space.
> At first we said it wasn't worth it  . . . .but, it's insurance.  What
> would the consequences
> have been for the couple times we've used it and if it wasn't available?
> The
> obvious operations in TSM would fail - this is bad, but not a disaster.  No
> production
> system is down because of this.  The worse thing would probably be
> restores, if any were needed, would fail.
>
> Interested in your thoughts . . . . .

We have had a 3494 for over 6 years now, and in that time the robot has failed
several times.  (In its first week, it earned the name 'butter fingers' but
we'll leave that story for another day).  We do not have the HA option,
although I admit it would be cool, I would probably like to have them set
up in 'dual' mode.  When the robot fails, I normally drive in, place the
robot in Manual and take over, along with a few of our Operations staff.

I admit it is pretty tough during collocated migrations!  My only gripe is
that with 3 or 4 3494's in town, IBM still refuses to stock any parts in
our area.  At least stock a few parts that fail the most, such as gripper
assemblies, motors, and belts.  A simple repair usually takes hours just
driving to Bloomington, Peoria, or waiting for the plane to arrive.

With all that, I don't think I could ever justify the expense of HA to
management, especially in the day of cheap disk, that will soon replace
my cool library.  If we were doing lots of tape mounts during the day for
lets say HSM operations, and robot response was more important, we would
probably had invested in it several years ago.  We just never made it there.

Just my .05 (with inflation).

Bob