Re: Virtual tape - size and saving

One small correction. LTO3 is only full height so you could only get one into a 3573-L2U (TS3100)
LTO4 goes to half height where you could get two of them into it. LTO3 and LTO4 tapes are now the same price, although the drives are a bit different in acquisition costs. Still both are very low.
The tapes run about $38/ea at CDW. Same price in most places.

Jim Oberholtzer
Chief Technical Architect
Agile Technology Architects


On 10/1/2013 7:31 AM, rob@xxxxxxxxx wrote:

I could ask you more questions but really it comes down to asking your BP
what would 'work' and what could be done with what you have. For example,
WRKHDWRSC *STG and what kind of controller is driving that tape drive.
Could it drive a LTO 3? Could you get two of them to drive two different
tape drives in the same tape library? If you already have a SAN switch
(or are looking at one) is now the time to consider going fiber instead?

For example you could get a 3573-L2U with two drives but I think the
lowest you could go is LTO3. This will read and write LTO2 tapes but
would only read LTO1. LTO3 tapes would give you more capacity and speed.
That's another consideration, moving to newer generation LTO tapes could
reduce your backup window. Somewhere there's a speed comparison chart.
IDK if you're still fitting everything on one LTO2 tape but the newer ones
also hold more. Used LTO3 tapes are pretty cheap - I should know as we've
recently sold a few hundred on the used market. There you go, save to the
faster LTO3 and dup to the LTO2's for offsite? And when you do DUPMEDBRM
then WRKOBJBRM will show you both the original tape holding the data and
the duplicate media.



Rob Berendt
-- IBM Certified System Administrator - IBM i 6.1 Group Dekko Dept 1600 Mail to: 2505 Dekko Drive Garrett, IN 46738 Ship to: Dock 108 6928N 400E Kendallville, IN 46755 http://www.dekko.com From: Jeff Crosby <jlcrosby@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion <midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx>, Date: 10/01/2013 08:12 AM Subject: Re: Virtual tape - size and saving Sent by: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx 3581, LTO2, SCSI On Tue, Oct 1, 2013 at 7:20 AM, <rob@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Jeff,
>
> First, what kind of 3580 do you have? LTO1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6?
>
> What kind of connection does it have: SCSI, fiber?
>
> I would think that a 3573-L2U with two drives would go pretty cheap on

the

> used market today. We have a 3573-L2U with a single LTO3 scsi drive in
> that we have no use for that we're going to toss in on the trade in when
> we upgrade from Power 6 to Power 7 NLT next quarter.
> A library like that handle duping quite nice. We have a 3573-L4U with
> four LTO4 fiber drives in Garrett that did a bang up job duping tapes

from

> LTO3 to LTO4 and BRMS handled it well.
>
> Then again, some of the other players on the list are pushing VTL
> appliances which will give you your local tape for quick restores and

then

> give you a remote duplication elsewhere. Some have their own software
> (which rather scares me). Others simply emulate existing tape libraries
> and play well with BRMS.
>
> I would think that the save to tape would be faster than the save to

disk

> since LTO is no slouch in the speed department and will be using a
> different controller than your disk controller.
>
>
> Rob Berendt
> --