Hi What kind of ATL you wish to use, is normally bound to your budget. But if I could rank the tape libraries, I would do it in the following order:
1. StorageTek PowderHorn 9310 with 9840B fibre drives This is probably the most powerful tape library on the market today. The robotics are alot faster than anything else I've seen on the market. Also, it's reliable, and the 9840 tapedrives are both very reliable, and fast. Especially if you use native FC drives. The STK9310 can contain up to 6000 cartridges per unit. And, you can connect multiple 9310 into one tape library. We have one customer running 3 9310 connected into one library. This means 18.000 cartridges. 2. IBM 3494 ATL with 3590 H1A fibre drives With the new drives, 3590 H1A, the 3494 has become my next in choice. I've seen theese tape drives go alot faster than the spec from IBM. And, the 3494 ATL is a very reliable tape library. The customer mentioned above, also have one of theese for their copypool. 3. IBM 3584 Anaconda or STK L700E with LTO Ultrium drives Both these tapelibraries are open system libraries. Both can house a huge amount of data. Both are expandable, and both use LTO Ultrium drives, where each tape can hold 200GB of data, and reach speed up to 28-30MB/s (monitored on FC native drives). Also, both libraries are affordable, i.e is relatively cheap compared to 9310 or 3494. Hope this helps Best Regards Daniel Sparrman ----------------------------------- Daniel Sparrman Exist i Stockholm AB Propellervägen 6B 183 62 HÄGERNÄS Växel: 08 - 754 98 00 Mobil: 070 - 399 27 51
