Allen,

 I too thought that LTOs might not be up to scratch for 24x7 operation, but
I recently went looking.  I could only find information for generation 1 of
LTO, but both LTO1 and SDLT are rated at 250,000 hours MTBF on a 100% duty
cycle.

Now that figure may be playing with engineering numbers, and I'm not sure
that I really know what it means - I'm certain that in real life drives fail
more frequently than that, so manufacturers must obviously fiddle with the
definition of a failure to get their numbers.

Anyway, the gist is that LTO drives are ready for 24x7 operation.

Regards

Steve

Steven Harris
AIX and TSM admin
Brisbane Australia


-----Original Message-----
From: ADSM: Dist Stor Manager [mailto:ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU] On Behalf Of
Allen S. Rout
Sent: Thursday, 3 August 2006 12:37 PM
To: ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU
Subject: [ADSM-L] Tape Drive Choices: What, and why?

Hi, all.

I'm looking into what choices folks have made for their tape drives,
and why they picked what they did.  I'm really happy with what I've
got, but I figure that state is perpetuated by questioning it, rather
than settling in.


I'm running 3590s (on the way out) and 3592s.  The capacity is close
to the top per-cartridge (500G raw per cart), and the speed is quite
good, ~80GB/s.

When we added the 1-gen 3592s a few years ago, seek speed was an
important difference between that and the then current LTO2; I
understand that LTO3 has made up some ground there but not all the
way.

My drives are getting a duty cycle approaching 100%; there are very
few times of the day I don't have jobs waiting in line for them.  My
SE is kind of nervous about them; he says we're mean to them. :)

I am given to understand that this kind of treatment tears LTO3s
apart; they aren't designed for that kind of 24x7 usage.

In a nutshell, I love my 3592s, I run them constantly and have
essentially no maintenance issues with them.  I've got some of them in
a remote installation ~300 miles away, and run them with confidence,
so far borne out. (8 months of production)



So, any opinions?  Love stories for LTO3 or that sun whatever-1000 ?
Hate stories?



- Allen S. Rout




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