On Wed, Sep 05, 2001 at 08:42:18AM -0400, Richard Parkinson wrote:
Rich,
> First, it is always good to remember that you get what you pay for.
> Meaning, price more often then not reflects the product. StorageTek may be
> the most expensive in some cases, but they are also the most reliable and
> the company you want to deal with if a problem ever arises.
O yeahhh. It took me only 4 months to get to the point where
Veritas, STK started working on cleaning problem for DLT tape drives.
Bunch of calls were closed even without consideration.
Getting new firmware for STK bridges was nightmare.
I had to prove we had problems to get new firmware.
>
> Almost EVERY SAN vendor is selling relabeled equipment. STK does it, Compaq
> does it, ATL does it, ADIC does it, etc... The only companies I have not
> seen do it are Brocade, Crossroads and McData. But that is because almost
> 100% of their business is in selling SAN hardware.
I am 100% agree with these statement. Just wanted to point to
another aspect of relabeled hardware - support. In our case:
- SUN L700 library , relabeled STK L700. STK supports the libraries and
I am HAPPY. Yes, I can sleep during nights. My management is trying to
bring the cost of maintanence down. Everyone got their own goals.
- Compaq SAN switches, relabeled Brocade. getting support from both Brocade an
d Compaq.
- STK 3200 SCSI<->FC bridges, relabeled CrossRoads. paying to STK for support.
The support we are getting is not acceptable for the money we paid.
Can we get support from somewhere else? No. CrossRoads refuses to
provide any support as soon as bridges got STK label.
Can we pay less? NO, it's 24x7 only
We are paying premium and it's not "you got what you paid for"
>
> Choosing a library often comes down to personal preference. Some people
> love ATL or ADIC, while others hate them. I have been involved in every
> type of library I can think of and every type of tape drive. If you are
> looking to save money and not spend much, the Exabyte has an OK setup with
> mammoth II tape drives. But again, you get what you pay for.
>
> If you have money to spend, an STK L700 with 9840 tape drives is great. You
> will be hard pressed to find ANY vendor that can outperform this
> architecture.
>
According to Veritas, serverless backup is the way to go,
so SCSI<->FC bridges would be becoming more important part of
backups.
FC ready tape drives from STK doesn't have built-in third copy
option and you have to go through SCSI<->FC bridge. I would be happy
if I am wrong.
STK tape drives are the most expensive tape drives in industry.
>
> I help customers make this decision every week, but in reality, it is your
> decision to make. Go out and have each vendor give you a technical overview
> (NOT A SALES OVERVIEW) and get quotes. You should have a good idea of
> performance on each type of drive, you can get references from each vendor
> and you can intelligently make a very good decision in buying this hardware.
>
> Hope this helps some.
>
> Rich Parkinson
> Staff Consultant
> VERITAS Software
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Andrew Shinkarev [mailto:shinkara AT pprd.abbott DOT com]
> Sent: Wednesday, September 05, 2001 8:28 AM
> To: Blake, Delroy
> Cc: veritas-bu AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu
> Subject: Re: [Veritas-bu] Buying a new Robot
>
>
> On Tue, Sep 04, 2001 at 03:57:18PM -0400, Blake, Delroy wrote:
>
> I would avoid AIT tape drives. I've heard several times AIT
> tape drive has switches you need to turn on/off based on
> OS connected too. In mixed environment with SAN it becomes
> unclear for me how AIT would be working. I could be wrong.
> If anyone else have experience could you share please????
>
> I can't say I am happy with DLT ( DLT7000 to be correct )
> Too many bad tapes, slow loading, positioning. You have to duplicate
> if you want to have you data safe.
>
> STK robots are OK, but could be expensive, the support is quite expensive
> too
> which is available in our area as 24x7 only. But.... at least it works.
> I will never buy SAN<->SCSI bridges again from STK. They are relabelled
> CrossRoads, 24x7 support only and it costs more than any other vendor
> could offer for the same kind of equipment. The support is too far from
> excellence, or what we could expect for this kind of money.
>
> Previous expirience with ATL and their support pushed us to switch to
> STK. It was old kind robots ATL 6/176, the last of ours
> was made in 1998 and we never ever got it working.
> ATL used PC parts inside, I especially liked idea of using regular
> PC power supplies for power up tape drives.
>
>
> > You have to state what drive techology you want to use. As an example if
> you
> > choose fromt Technologies you might have a matrix as such.
> >
> > DLT ADIC,ATL,STK
> > AIT2 ADIC,Spectra Logic,Qualstar
> > DTF ADIC,SONY
> > 9840 STK
> > 3590 ADIC,IBM,STK
> >
> > You also should look at what type of capicty you will need.
> >
> > we using the following formula
> >
> >
> > Total Capacity = (((V + ((0.25 * V) * 5)) * R) - ((R / 4) * V)) + (V * M)
> >
> > Where:
> >
> > V = the total amount of data to be backed up.
> >
> > R = Number of weeks that non-monthend data should be kept for before being
> > recycled.
> >
> > M = Number of months that monthend data should be kept on-line in the
> silo.
> >
> >
> >
> > All disk drives are rated in MTBF
> > That's mean time between failures.
> > The question is not if your disk will crash but when.
> > Got BACKUP?
> >
> >
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Kratunis, Anthony [mailto:akratunis AT tiaa-cref DOT org]
> > Sent: Tuesday, September 04, 2001 12:43 PM
> > To: veritas-bu AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu
> > Subject: [Veritas-bu] Buying a new Robot
> >
> >
> > I have finally been given a budget to purchase our first real robot tape
> > drive library.
> > I know there are probably horror stories for every piece of hardware ever
> > built, but
> >
> > If you have strong feelings either for or against a particular tape
> library
> > and care to share them, I would appreciate any insights. Please be
> specific
> > in the reasons
> > thanks very much
> > anthony kratunis
> >
> >
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>
> --
> ----
> Andrew Shinkarev
> Network Systems Specialist
> Abbott Laboratories
> (847) 9387559
> shinkara AT pprd.abbott DOT com
> _______________________________________________
> Veritas-bu maillist - Veritas-bu AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu
> http://mailman.eng.auburn.edu/mailman/listinfo/veritas-bu
--
----
Andrew Shinkarev
Network Systems Specialist
Abbott Laboratories
(847) 9387559
shinkara AT pprd.abbott DOT com
|
