Hi, Question: 19 copies of the "same" data. Each copy 500GB. Tape library used a storage. Would like a cheaper solution.
Let's start: 19*500GB is 9½TB. Disk drives are up to 6TB today. The data will fit in 2 disk drives - without using dedup and compression. Apply dedup and compression and the data will probably fit in a USB memory stick (1TB). The obvious answer is: This is 2016 and tape is dead since many years! If you skip the tape library and use to modern design with container pools you will save a lot of money. Both on the hardware (tape libs are not cheap) and most important on the cost of licenses. /Anders Räntilä