One of the things I just purchased for my firm is a new Dell PowerVault 132T LTO2 tape library. LTO2 tapes are the next generation of linear tape cartridges similar to older DLT. They have a built in table of contents chip (similar to AIT tapes) so that drives can detect what is on the tape without having to read from the tape at all.
They hold 200gigabytes native or up to 400GB compressed and write at 36megabytes/sec native. So it's a tape that stores a ton of info and is about as fast as a modern IDE hard drive. The 132T holds 21 tapes for 4.2 terabytes of total storage.
Don't know how good it will be but I can't wait to find out. I've been waiting to get my hands on an LTO tape system since they were introduced about 2 years ago.
Anyhow, that's my example of a new (relatively - LTO2 has been out for about 8 months) technology available to IT Managers to help them run an enterprise. Let me know if you have any examples of new and fascinating products/technologies that are now available.
Good luck with the LTO's
Hopefully you've got good Backup software to go with it.
We have a pair of 70 tape LTO ADIC's which in conjunction with NetBackup Datacenter has proven to be a troublesome combination.
Then again I suspect its Veritas as the same software performs abysmally with a pair of DLT Auotchangers too (hint- they don't autochange which is wierd because they do index).
Raj.
Posted by: Raj | Friday, January 30, 2004 at 12:29 AM
I wish Dell had that model when I bought our LTO autoloader at school. I just have the old fashioned kind - nothing special about the tape. DLT one too. BE 9 works fine with both of them, most of the time - sometimes it just refuses to backup, but, that's BE for ya.
Posted by: Brian Desmond | Friday, January 30, 2004 at 09:41 PM
The tapes are basically the same from LTO to LTO 2, just higher capacity and speed. I know that the roadmap is to get LTO up to 1TB per tape by like 2008.
Will be interesting to see what SDLT goes up to next.
Hehe, yeah BE 9 is what we use. Sometimes like you said it doesn't backup for whatever reason. Oh well. Most small companies can't afford NetBackup or Legato Networker, which both cost about 5 times as much as BE, at least for smaller installations. If you have more than 10 servers, I think that's where it evens out. And of course you can't use BE in *NIX/Windows environments...Well you can, but then you'd need a separate backup system just for the *NIX systems.
Posted by: Alex Scoble | Friday, January 30, 2004 at 10:42 PM
First of all. I TNOTES hahaha...gess what I'm ADMIN NOTES. Too cool, KC Lemson, directed me to this site, which i though it was hilarious, especially since we both use TYPEPAD. Anyways. love the site, looking to buy an LTO2 from DELL since we are an all DELL shop.
Anyways..cheers !
Neal
Posted by: Neal | Friday, April 30, 2004 at 08:04 AM
First of all. I TNOTES hahaha...gess what I'm ADMIN NOTES. Too cool, KC Lemson, directed me to this site, which i though it was hilarious, especially since we both use TYPEPAD. Anyways. love the site, looking to buy an LTO2 from DELL since we are an all DELL shop.
Adding a link to you on my site.
Anyways..cheers !
Neal
Posted by: Neal | Friday, April 30, 2004 at 08:05 AM
First of all. ITNOTES hahaha...gess what I'm ADMIN NOTES. Too cool, KC Lemson, directed me to this site, which i though it was hilarious, especially since we both use TYPEPAD. Anyways. love the site, looking to buy an LTO2 from DELL since we are an all DELL shop.
Adding a link to you on my site.
Anyways..cheers !
Neal
Posted by: Neal | Friday, April 30, 2004 at 08:05 AM