Veritas-bu

[Veritas-bu] Anyone have an StorageTek SL500 library?

2006-05-11 08:41:42
Subject: [Veritas-bu] Anyone have an StorageTek SL500 library?
From: jpiszcz.backup AT gmail DOT com (Justin Piszcz)
Date: Thu, 11 May 2006 08:41:42 -0400
Wow! Thanks for the detailed response!

Since the picker or robot is a shelf that moves up and down the SL500,
there are circumstances where it gets in a stuck state if the power is
reset or down and requires the use of the "magic ratchet bar" so that
you can open the door to reset things. Hard
to explain, only through experience can you appreciate that one.

This sounds horrible.



On 5/11/06, Peter DrakeUnderkoffler <pcd AT xinupro DOT com> wrote:
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> I've deployed and worked with several at different clients so far and
> my opinion seems to be shared with the STK deployment engineers so far.
> The only thing going for it as far as my experience goes, is the expandability
> or growth potential which translates into TCO.  When they work, they work
> fine except for any interaction you have with them directly.  NBU knowns how
> to manage them well.  I've worked with most of the other STK libraries except 
> for
> the SL8500 and here are my gripes:
>
> Manual intervention includes 2 buttons and 5 LEDs that blink in a strange
> and partially undocumented way.  There was plans for an LCD interface that
> would sit inside the grill, but that has not made it out of STK/Sun yet.
>
> The out of band management is through a user unfriendly GUI that now also
> runs on Solaris but used to only be windows.  With this gui, you can see
> some parameters but not all.  There is no way of seeing exactly what is 
> happening
> within the library in real time.  Most enterprise libraries have this, like 
> the
> web page that the L180 and L700 and others have, where you can watch the 
> picker take
> a tape and move it to a drive for instance.  It wasn't until recently that 
> you could
> get an inventory of the library through this management tool.  Thank goodness 
> for
> robtest but some customers are talking about doing the closed circuit TV thing
> again to see what is going on.
>
> There have been several topics pop up where even the support and field 
> engineers
> didn't know how it works.  For instance, setting up automatic cleaning and
> getting a count on how many times that cleaning took place.
>
> Since the picker or robot is a shelf that moves up and down the SL500, there 
> are circumstances
> where it gets in a stuck state if the power is reset or down and requires the 
> use
> of the "magic ratchet bar" so that you can open the door to reset things. Hard
> to explain, only through experience can you appreciate that one.
>
> They do work, but from  an enterprise stand point, there are better 
> solutions, even
> from STK/Sun, but thats only my opinion.
>
> Thanks
> Peter
> Peter DrakeUnderkoffler
> Xinupro, LLC
> 617-834-2352
>
>
>
> Justin Piszcz wrote:
> > We will be receiving an EVAL unit soon and wonder if anyone had any
> > opinions on this library?  For instance, how reliable is it compared
> > to say, an L700?
> > Suppose an L700 is better, but the other problem is STK is deprecating
> > that library soon and the SL500 is going to be the newly supported
> > library.
> >
> > Justin.
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Veritas-bu maillist  -  Veritas-bu AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu
> > http://mailman.eng.auburn.edu/mailman/listinfo/veritas-bu
> >
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