From an email I received from my business partner that was sourced by
Mark Olson at IBM....
Support in the Power 520 (9407-M15, 9408-M25) and the Power 550
(9409-M50) is announced for the high capacity, high speed Ultrium4 LTO-4
tape drive which goes into the imbedded tape drive slot/bay in the
system unit.
Availability is planned for 30 May 2008.
We made some outstanding improvements in our schedule to provide SAS
LTO-4
support based on feedback from you. My thanks to the Tape
Development/Support/Test team and to the infrastructure teams (config,
manufacturing, RFA, pricing, and others). Because of the move up in
schedule, there is no formal announcement letter for this product
enhancement. However:
1. The 9407-M15, 9408-M25 and 9409-M50 sales manuals are being
updated
to add support for the LTO-4 tape drive feature and tape cartridge
feature..
2. Pricing data bases are being updated to show the tape drive
feature
and tape cartridge feature and their prices
3. eConfig has been updated effective 5 May 2008 to include support
for
this tape drive. SPT will be showing support shortly, hopefully
13
May 2008.
4. The AAS ordering system should be able to accept orders for this
feature by 9 May 2008, but shipments will not be until the end of
May..
5. PTFs are being released to provide the IBM i support for this
drive.
This LTO-4 SAS tape drive is ordered as feature #5746 and is placed in
the
Half-High(HH) tape bay/slot of the system unit. The LTO-4 drive's
cartridge capacity is 800 GB uncompressed or 1.6 TB with typical 2x
compression. It's rated native data transfer is up to 120MB/sec. The
LTO-4 SAS Tape drive is compatible with LTO-4 (Read/Write), LTO-3
(Read/Write), and LTO-2 (Read) media. It's price is very attractive
compared to the LTO-2 SCSI tape drive which is offered in the POWER5
515/520/525 system unit. It will offer up to 4x the capacity and up to
5x faster transfer rate of the 200 GB LTO-2 tape drive. It has an even
better performance/capacity comparison to the 36 GB SAS DAT 4mm tape
which was previously the only SAS tape option available for the imbedded
tape bay in the 9407-M15, 9408-M25 and 9409-M50.
There is also an optional #5747 feature which ships five LTO-4 tape
cartridges for customer convenience.
NOTE: The LTO-4 tape drive is being announced outside of the normal
(but
much longer lead time) announcement letter process. By using a
light-weight process to update the sales manual and send out pricing
information, we shave weeks off the announcement date. But then we are
very dependent upon you and your contacts to spread the word via
email/phone/fax/whatever that this enhancement has happened. If things
have happened as we hope, the pricing files around the world have been
updated or will be updated very shortly. If this doesn't happen in
your
country, please alert the Pricing community to look for something they
know as an "EPIC change notice" (the light weight process mentioned
earlier).
The price should be the same as the #5746 feature in the Power 520
8203-E4A or Power 550 8204-E8A in most countries of the world.
Please .. SPREAD THE WORD .... widely and vigorously..
The LTO-4 tape drive will require PTFs to be loaded on the system for
either IBM i 5.4 or 6.1. The PTFs are planned to be available by May
30.
Required PTFs for the tape drive: V5R4M5 = MF44592
V6R1 = MF44593
Optional, but highly recommended: V5R4M5 = MF44542 and MF44543
V6R1 = MF44640 and MF44641
This tape drive can be either shipped with a new system or ordered as an
MES for installation for an existing Power 520 or Power 550. This is a
customer set up (CSU) feature.
The prerequisites for this tape drive are
1) an empty tape drive bay/slot in the Power 520/550 system unit,
2) a #3655 HH SAS cable which goes inside the system unit, and
3) pre-requisite PTFs
BTW -- This imbedded HH SAS LTO-4 enhancement is in addition to the
external TS2230 SCSI HH LTO-3 enhancment communicated informally late in
April. IBM i has supported this tape drive with an IOP for some time,
but
now supports this tape drive without an IOP as well. This tape drive
is
the TS2230 which is also known as a 3580 H3L. The tape is not
configured/ordered via eConfig, but can be ordered via the web or the
System x ordering system. The SEO part number to order the TS2230
3580-H3L
is 3580L3E. This tape drive can be attached without an IOP using the
existing #5775* smart IOA.
( * The 9117-MMA and 9119-FHA use the #5736 feature instead of #5775 to
describe the same physical PCI adapter used without an IOP.)
Michael Crump
Manager, Computing Services
Saint-Gobain Containers, Inc.
1509 S. Macedonia Ave.
Muncie, IN 47302
765.741.7696
765.741.7012 f
This email and its attachments may be confidential and are intended
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"You can't buy respect. But you can always buy more ammunition, so who
needs respect?"
-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Kirk Goins
Sent: Monday, May 05, 2008 3:38 PM
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
Subject: Re: Power config questions
Kirk Goins wrote:
Pete Massiello wrote:
There is NO QIC on a M15 because there is no SCSI controller, only an
internal SAS controller. I don't think the current options for tape
are
good enough and in my opinion IBM rushed the announcement and left
the small
end customer with no viable tape alternative. This was very
short-sightedness on IBMs part, and while 4mm isn't as bad as the
VXA-320
that IBM tried to stick us with a few years ago, it is a poor
alternative.
If I have 200 or 300GB of data, how can I do an unattended backup?
Actually you can hang an external LTO2 HH or a SLR60 or SLR100 via the
FC5775 IOPLess Tape/Disk IOA and a 7207. 7212 or 7214. Lame, but
better
than a 36/72GB 4mm
Just to add to this.. I noticed in IBM eConfig Tool I can now configure
a LTO4 Half- Height SAS tape drive on the M15.
midrange.com
