Luminex and Optica are the low end of the cost spectrum for VTS's that are
still completely acceptable for enterprise use. They are both fairly robust
and the cost is pretty close. Optica is just slightly better with respect to
ease of use (day to day support of keeping the VTS and your tape library in
sync), but they are both good choices. EMC has a very good box, as does IBM,
but the cost is a lot higher and you really don't get all that much more from
it.
Both LUMINEX and OPTICA store their tapes in standard AWS format, and they are
actually interchangeable (the tapes), except that Optica has a special little
side file that is supposed to ensure that the data was correctly created and
maintained, although I am not aware of any problems that it told any of our
clients about a mismatch.
Of the sites we support, all but one of them have VTS boxes, and 26 of them
have ONLY VTS boxes (no real tape at all). 14 have Optica (4 with NetApp or
similar storage, 10 internal storage), 11 Luminex, 32 are IBM TS77xx, 18 are
EMC DLm85xx, 2 Fujitsu ETERNUS (which I don't recommend but not because they
are bad, they are just more difficult for most sites), and 6 Oracle|STK VSMs.
We have 2 that use CA-Tape, but those sites don't actually use much tape at all
and I'm not sure CA-Tape counts in this case as it's all software.
I think the only "bad" thing about the Luminex is that they used to support
only 8GB Ficon (that may have changed, but I don't think so). It's not like it
will be slow, but 16GB is "better".
If you have something specific you need to know about any of the above feel
free to ask and I'll give you whatever information I can.
Brian Westerman
On Mon, 10 Sep 2018 11:27:00 -0300, Carlos Bodra - Pessoal
wrote:
>I had 12 different boxes installed in 11 different customers with z/OS (v1 and
>v2), OS/390 (v2), z/VM (v5 v6), z/VSE (v5) and VSE/ESA (v2).
>One of customers has 2 boxes (production and DR) using replication.
>All these boxes has being installed since 2012 and has no trouble with
>hardware and small software problems was solved fast by Luminex support,
>including asking for some new facilities.
>
>Carlos Bodra
>IBM System Certified System z
>São Paulo - Brazil
>
>-Mensagem original-
>De: IBM Mainframe Discussion List Em nome de Todd
>Burrell
>Enviada em: sexta-feira, 7 de setembro de 2018 15:54
>Para: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
>Assunto: Question about Luminex VTS solutions
>
>Does anyone have any experience with Luminex virtual tape solutions? We saw a
>presentation today that was fairly impressive, but we would like to be sure
>that they actually work as well as they say.
>
>Please email me directly.
>Todd Burrell
>todd_burr...@csx.com
>
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