Hi there,

You should consider that DLT technology does not have a future. The CEO of
Quantum Rick Belluzzo said in an interview with www.theregister.com that DLT
would "slide out of the way" and "there has been massive consolidation onto
LTO". The phase out of DLT technology will occur as quickly as in two years.

The Wikipedia page on DLT claims that the decision to end development was
taken in February.

The end of DLT technology is important news. Just recently we conducted
survey of Amanda users
http://wiki.zmanda.com/index.php/Results_of_Amanda_Users_Survey_2006
and almost 30% reported using DLT or SDLT tape drives. For regulatory
compliance many organizations are required to keep tapes for 7-10 years or
even longer. With Quantum dropping support for DLT, recovering all those DLT
and SDLT tapes 10 years from now could be a challenge.

Regards
----------
Dmitri Joukovski 


-----Original Message-----
From: owner-amanda-users AT amanda DOT org [mailto:owner-amanda-users AT amanda 
DOT org]
On Behalf Of Sven Rudolph
Sent: Tuesday, March 06, 2007 5:27 AM
To: amanda-users AT amanda DOT org
Subject: Re: SDLT-4 compareded to LTO-3

Michael Loftis <mloftis AT wgops DOT com> writes:

> --On March 2, 2007 10:31:33 AM +0000 Anthony   Worrall
> <anthony.worrall AT reading.ac DOT uk> wrote:

>> This is not strictly an amanda question but I thought I would see if any
>> one has any views on SDLT-4 compared to LTO-3.
>>
>> We are currently looking at replacing our tape devices an are looking at
>> SDLT-4 which seems to be about the same price as LTO-3 but offer twice
>> the capacity. Has anyone got any experience of these drives. I am told
>> by our supplier that they are selling many more LTO-3 than SDLT-4. Is it
>> just that SDLT-4 is newer is there some reason?
>
> SDLT-4 (DLT-S4) may cost less $/gb but it still costs more per tape.
> So unless you're actually using that much tape it may noe be as
> attractive as it seems.

In my configuration I can easily utilize 800GB tapes; so this is no
problem. I tested a DLT-S4 library and it works fine.

In Germany the tapes cost fourty percent more than LTO-3 tapes; so
DLT-S4 is less expensive than LTO-3.

> Several other issues with DLT-S4 are the relatively slow rated
> speed of 60MB/sec (LTO3 is rated at 80, and I routinely see 60 in
> production, I'd see more if I had faster hosts).

This means that DLT-S4 perfectly matches your current speed
requirements ;-)

> Also I don't know, but last I checked DLT still had to be streamed at
> the rate they were at.

Sorry, I never cared about this. Two SATA disks as RAID0 provide
enough bandwidtht.

> Though the biggest reasons LTO is outselling DLT/SDLT is SDLT is
> viewed as being end of line first,

That's IMHO the major point. There are qualified rumours that DLT-S4
will be the last in the DLT family.

> LTO-3 also has atleast one advantage for (capable) libraries, each
> cartridge has a contactless (read... RFID like) memory that can
> report the tapes last known condition, as well as user data.  in
> theory atleast an LTO drive or library has only to read this tag to
> decide whether-or-not it can read the tape, and if it even should.

Anyone ever used LTO CM (cartridge memory)? With amanda?

> DLT and SDLT have the problem that if you load an older generation
> cartridge than your drive supports you may destroy the heads.

I didn't try all combinations, but my SDLT-I drive reliably rejected
SDLT-II tapes. Nothing has been destroyed.

        Sven