Just some remarks 1. Drop 3570 of the list. IBM is withdrawing it so is not good idea to be used for new install. Also for same capacity you will need bigger footprint. 2. AIT is not bad but not widely used for TSM. Only few people on this list can help you with TSM + AIT issues. 3. Depending on how this huge ammount of files will be stored (backup/archive/HSM) consider either LTO or 3590/9840. But if your customer had not counted his budget for tape library it does not matter will it be 3584, 3494 or STK silo. The cherry on top of its $1.2m icecream will not be cheap :-) 4. 700GB/week is not too much but this backup. We are always discussing that TSM should be sized not from backup but from restore requirements. If your requirements are not too high you can even get tiny 2-way Intel box with single FC adapter. If you need faster restores either use SAN clients or get to a box with more PCI buses (4-way or more, not necessarily filled with processors). Look at the recent thread "Win 2K VS AIX". Hope this may be of use to you.
Zlatko Krastev IT Consultant Please respond to "ADSM: Dist Stor Manager" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent by: "ADSM: Dist Stor Manager" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] cc: Subject: opinion on AIT vs LTO and 3570 tape technology? Hello all, I am trying to determine what would be the best tape solution for our ARAN (Automatic Road ANalyzer) van data system. Basically, huge amounts of jpg, mdb and xls data is generated (possibly to the order of 700G per week for 20 weeks, and 20G for the remainder of the weeks). This data will be staged to a 1.55 TB disk array. The customer wants to be able to access the current year's data and the preceding year's data. The "Terabyte" server and two or three processing workstations will be on a private fiber/GigE network, connected by a Catalyst 3550-12G switch. Having only actually experience with 3590 and 3570 drives, I was hoping that someone with experience would be able to give me an opinion (nobody on this list, right ;-) as to which tape technology would best suit their situation -- small footprint, hold 5-10 TB of data to start, scalable, fast access, fast read and write. Money is an object, but for this exercise let's just keep it an abstraction. I had originally thought a 3584 with at least 3 drives would be a good start, but then I started looking at the AIT, whose access time beats the pants off of LTO, and thinking that would be a better solution. I had briefly thought about HSM, but the enormous number of files and directories makes it sound like a really bad idea to me. Any thoughts? I'd also appreciate any ideas about what kind of x86 box would be suited for the TSM server for this system. My only experience sizing servers is with enterprises and RS/6000 servers (I can spend a million here and there for "my" stuff, but this customer has already spend 1.2 million on this "turnkey" solution, and isn't going to be real happy to hear that for them to get their stuff to work and have backups and DR, they need to spend an additional $100,000, but OTOH, that's just deserts for having left IS out of the loop in the purchase in the first place.) TIA and have a wonderful Friday! lisa
