Warning - compared to tape (and DASD, and about anything else), Optical is SLOW! Painfully slow. Excruciatingly slow (getting the idea?). And the volume sizes are a bit small (5.2GB, vrs 60GB on a 3590J tape).
Optical has the advantage of very fast mounts and seeks. If you are providing HSM for any customers, Optical is the ideal place to store it, as your retrieves will be fast. I'm a packrat (see my box of 5.25" 1.2MB floppies, still in the shrink-wrap?), so I'd take them. The one thing is not to let the clients write directly to them - the speed thing. Migration times from DASD will be long, but you'd be saving cycles on your tape drives, so that would pay off. One last note to remember - each library is its own storage pool, so you'll have to have some intelligent management setup to utilize all 4 of the 3995's. Nick Cassimatis [EMAIL PROTECTED] Today is the tomorrow of yesterday. "Denis L'Huillier" To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <dlhuillier@PER cc: SHING.COM> Subject: Optical vs. Tape Sent by: "ADSM: Dist Stor Manager" <[EMAIL PROTECTED] ST.EDU> 01/16/2002 12:53 PM Please respond to "ADSM: Dist Stor Manager" Does anybody have any input as to what the benefits of Optical vs. Tape are? I currently have 4 3494's with 3590E's and K tapes. I was offered the use of 4 3995's that were being used on the Mainframe for an application which has been retired. Do I want them? I am currently working on an Archive solution- could these be beneficial? Pros / Cons ? Thanks. Regards, Denis L. L'Huiller 973-360-7739 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Enterprise Storage Forms -> http://admpwb01/misc/misc/storage_forms_main.html