We've been using LTO2 here since December, 2003. We have 14 IBM 3580 drives (SCSI), and have replaced 5 drives in that time period (once twice). We move about 1.5 TB/day. We make heavy use of collocation, so we see 300-900 mount cycles/day (perhaps more important than bytes moved). Overall, we view this failure rate as acceptable. Most of these replacements were done aggressively (i.e., they may not have actually been necessary), but the vendor (ADIC) decided to replace the drive to minimize possible future pain.
I think the LTO1 drives may have been a tad more reliable. Make sure you have the latest Atape driver. ..Paul At 02:53 PM 6/1/2005, Kauffman, Tom wrote:
OK -- It was the only possibility I could think of at the time. I feel your pain (we had DLT-7000 drives in an STK box that seemed to die on a monthly basis), but I've not seen any issues with IBM LTO2 drives here. Tom -----Original Message----- From: ADSM: Dist Stor Manager [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Zoltan Forray/AC/VCU Sent: Wednesday, June 01, 2005 12:12 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: LTO2 unreliability Environment is not an issue. This is in a *REAL* computer room (raised floors, UPS/conditioned electricity, industrial-strength cooling). "Kauffman, Tom" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent by: "ADSM: Dist Stor Manager" <[email protected]> 06/01/2005 01:00 PM Please respond to "ADSM: Dist Stor Manager" <[email protected]> To [email protected] cc Subject Re: [ADSM-L] LTO2 unreliability Zoltan -- I have an IBM 3584 with 10 LTO2 drives, installed last August. So far, I've had one service call -- one of the drives swallowed a tape and wouldn't let go of it. If I remember correctly, we got the tape out but replaced the drive just as a precaution. I pump something over 3 TB of data through the library daily, most to LTO2 tapes. All my offsite copies are written to LTO1 tapes (with the LTO2 drives), and runs to about 1.6 TB daily. Could you be having an environmental problem that's contributing to the failures? Tom Kauffman NIBCO, Inc -----Original Message----- From: ADSM: Dist Stor Manager [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Zoltan Forray/AC/VCU Sent: Wednesday, June 01, 2005 10:54 AM To: [email protected] Subject: LTO2 unreliability Are all LTO2 drives as unreliable as I have been experiencing ? We installed our first 3583 with 2-LTO2 drives, about a year ago. Of the two drives, both have been replaced at least one. I just replace one of the replacements, again (wouldn't power up). The first replacement was after about a month of usage ! We just upgraded our configuration by adding 2-drives to the existing library and purchasing another 3583 with 4-drives. These have now been in use for about 2-weeks. Of the 2-new drives added to the old library, one of them is already showing signs of problems (shows A! on the panel, which the book says drive hardware fault). Of my 9+ years of experience with 3590 (B and E) drives, I have never seen so many failures. Especially considering the amount of tapes that have been fed through the 3590 drives (the 4-E drives run through over 200-mounts a day). Is this normal ? Also, no I do not push what I consider a lot of data through these drives (~ 1TB per week). What kind of experiences do other folks have with IBM 3580 LTO2 drives, when it comes to reliability ?
-- Paul Zarnowski Ph: 607-255-4757 719 Rhodes Hall, Cornell University Fx: 607-255-8521 Ithaca, NY 14853-3801 Em: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
