We use a Sepaton S2100-ES2 without problems. Vicki's advice is sound: make sure the vendor's product is TSM certified; make the vendor supply an evaluation system and test thoroughly.
A VTL should faithfully emulate a particular physical ATL and particular physical drives. It should not require any drivers or patches unique to the VTL. Keep in mind the following points: 1) If you configure your VTL to be out of specs with the physical ATL you are emulating, your backup application, i.e. TSM, may have a problem. For example if the physical ATL has a max of 800 slots and you configure 1500 slots TSM may complain. 2) The VTL is a software/hardware product. All software has bugs and you may get bit, but then you may get bit by a software bug with a physical ATL also. The important thing is how responsive is the vendor when an issue does arise? This is where interviews with present customers is important. Insist on speaking to customers that have experienced problems. If the vendor can not or refuses to provide as a customer reference someone that had a problem that was successfully & promptly resolved then look for a different vendor. Also remember that with a physical ATL you will always be subject to failures caused by wear to mechanical parts. The only mechanical parts in a VTL are fans and drives, and redundancy protects you against those failures. Overall you should expect a quality VTL to be more reliable then a physical ATL, at least this has been my experience. Good luck, I am glad I went to a VTL, Milton Johnson -----Original Message----- From: ADSM: Dist Stor Manager [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Larry Peifer Sent: Friday, December 09, 2005 11:56 AM To: ADSM-L@VM.MARIST.EDU Subject: Re: Define path for direct attached fiber We're beginning to look into VTL and I'd be interested in what systems / vendors your considered and then which one you are going with. Running TSM 5.3 with AIX 5.2ML 5 on RS6000 P650. LTP San Clemente, California Victoria Ortepio <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent by: "ADSM: Dist Stor Manager" <ADSM-L@VM.MARIST.EDU> 12/09/2005 06:40 AM Please respond to "ADSM: Dist Stor Manager" <ADSM-L@VM.MARIST.EDU> To ADSM-L@VM.MARIST.EDU cc Subject Re: [ADSM-L] Define path for direct attached fiber Be careful with this one. We just purchased a VTL ourselves. We are running TSM 5.2.3. We are currently waiting for a fix with the vendor in order to configure TSM. In TSM V5.3, the code seems to have loosened up. Verify that the TSM version, o/s version, device drivers (o/s or TSM), the type of drives, is a configuration that the vendor has certified. Our problem is with LTO2 drives. Try speaking with one of their customers that has the same configuration as you do. Regards, Vicki MCI Piscataway, NJ -----Original Message----- From: ADSM: Dist Stor Manager [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Thorneycroft, Doug Sent: Thursday, December 08, 2005 5:24 PM To: ADSM-L@VM.MARIST.EDU Subject: [ADSM-L] Define path for direct attached fiber We are getting ready to purchase a Virtual Tape library. It will be direct fiber attached to our TSM 5.2.6 Win2K server via a host bus adapter. I was wondering how Tivoli will see the device for the path, is it similar the a scsi attached device ie. LB0.0.0.1 or something completely different?
