Your desire to have an IBM-only solution aside, I'll add some additional color.
You say NetApp bought Alacritus to get into the VTL business. They're the only major disk vendor to do so. Everybody else (including IBM) is just reselling somebody else's gear. (IBM, Sun, EMC, Copan = Falconstor, HP = SEPATON, HDS = Diligent) I would say that NetApp buying their own VTL shows commitment, where the other guys haven't figured out if VTL is part of their strategic direction or not. If you reference the de-dupe discussion, you'll notice that one thread that came up is scalability. The NetApp solution is a multi-head design that allows you to have as many heads as you need, while still having all your "tape drives" inside one VTL. The IBM (Falconstor) solution requires at least one VTL instance per head, so each new head you buy will mean another tape library represented inside TSM. While I think that you could make the argument that the latter doesn't hurt its scalability, I don't think you could make the argument that the IBM system is inherently more scalable than the NetApp solution. As far as de-dupe, neither IBM nor NetApp have announced their intentions in this space. (I'm not saying they're not working on it. They're just not telling anybody what they're doing.) Given that there are de-dupe VTLs/IDTs in GA (some for quite some time now), I think that buying a non-de-dupe VTL at this point is wasting your money -- whether we're talking 20:1 or 10:1 it still makes sense. So if you're going to consider either the NetApp or IBM solution for other reasons, I would make them commit in writing to their commitment to de-dupe. --- W. Curtis Preston Backup Blog @ www.backupcentral.com VP Data Protection, GlassHouse Technologies -----Original Message----- From: ADSM: Dist Stor Manager [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Strand, Neil B. Sent: Tuesday, September 04, 2007 7:17 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [ADSM-L] TSM and NetApp VTL700 Tom, If scalability is an issue, you may consider the IBM TS7520. The NetApp VTL does not use WAFL so you may want to consider the implications of support and your house knowledge. Netapp purchased Alactrius in 2005 to get into the VTL business. I just purchased an IBM TS7520 and enjoy an all IBM solution - AIX, TS7520, TS3500, TS1120. Not much room for finger pointing. You may want to review the discussion on data deduplication in this forum and consider how that technology may or may not integrate in your TSM puzzle. Cheers, Neil -----Original Message----- From: ADSM: Dist Stor Manager [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Thomas Rupp Sent: Tuesday, September 04, 2007 5:30 AM To: [email protected] Subject: [ADSM-L] TSM and NetApp VTL700 Hi TSM-ers, we are thinking about a NetApp NearStore VTL 700 for our new TSM environment. Anything I should consider with this piece of hardware? Thanks in advance Thomas Rupp Vorarlberger Illwerke AG ein Unternehmen von illwerke vkw Rechtsform: Aktiengesellschaft, Sitz: Bregenz, Firmenbuchnummer: FN 59202 m, Firmenbuchgericht: LG Feldkirch, UID-Nr.: ATU 36737402 IMPORTANT: E-mail sent through the Internet is not secure. Legg Mason therefore recommends that you do not send any confidential or sensitive information to us via electronic mail, including social security numbers, account numbers, or personal identification numbers. Delivery, and or timely delivery of Internet mail is not guaranteed. Legg Mason therefore recommends that you do not send time sensitive or action-oriented messages to us via electronic mail. This message is intended for the addressee only and may contain privileged or confidential information. Unless you are the intended recipient, you may not use, copy or disclose to anyone any information contained in this message. If you have received this message in error, please notify the author by replying to this message and then kindly delete the message. Thank you.
