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20/700 Feedback

 
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Tim Rolling
Advisor

20/700 Feedback

I'm considering the purchase of 20/700 and would love to hear what other 20/700 users think of the product. Looking for feedback on reliability, stability, and general satisfaction.

Proposed Configuration:
20/700
HP Ultrium drives
HP SCSI/FC bridge
Fabric switch
Omniback II v3.5

Please avoid leaving very negative replies on the forum. If you have concerns and feel inclined, then email your replies directly to me. Remember, this is HP's forum. I value and respect the company and its forum. Please exercise discretion if you are less than happy. Thanks.

Tim Rolling
tim.rolling@ditchwitch.com
Things are never as bad nor as good as you imagine.
3 REPLIES 3
Michael Tully
Honored Contributor

Re: 20/700 Feedback

Hi Tim,

Our setup is similar:
20/700 with DLT8000's
A4688A SCSI/FC bridge
EMC badged switches using fabric
OmniBack 3.5

Initially we were not happy as with
all very new equipment there were some
teething problems. We had to upgrade
firmware on the Library (2.36) the
tape drives, the bridge (2006y) and
make sure that the firmware in the
switch was compatible with both vendors.
Summing up we are now quite happy with
the reliability and performance.
Omniback works quite well within this
arrangement, but the 3.5 has some
limitations associated with it that
OB 4 has rectified. We are planning to
upgrade to version 4 once our testing
has been completed. The library itself
has some good features. The drives can
be setup for self cleaning. You can
place it on your LAN. Removable trays
from the CAP.
If you intend to attach mixed flavours
of NT and Unix, be mindful of how an
NT system will look for devices.

-Michael
Anyone for a Mutiny ?
Tim Rolling
Advisor

Re: 20/700 Feedback

Thanks Michael,

Would you care to offer a few details on the OB 3.5 limitations and the complications of a mixed NT/2K and Unix environment? We do intend to share the library between Windows and HP-UX servers.

Tim
Things are never as bad nor as good as you imagine.
Michael Tully
Honored Contributor
Solution

Re: 20/700 Feedback

Hi Tim,

3.5 limitations
- Database size 8Gb max.
- hard coding of devices to backups
(If one device fails it doesn't auto switch to
another device)

If you intend to setup the mixed environment, suggest you do it together having a cell manager for NT and cell manager on HPUX, with a MoM.
We have too many servers to administer from one
cell to have the single cell manager. Also you
would the problem of who is responsible for what if you have separate Unix and NT teams. The comment I made about how NT looks for devices, is that if you have an NT box as a client using FC, when installing the client and using the HP library tools it will send SCSI resets to the library and basically no backups will run. The library and bridge gets totally confused. To fix this, don't run any backups at all and reset the library
after.

For more information have a look at the software release notes from the following link.

http://ovweb.external.hp.com/lpe/doc_serv/

Let me know if require further info
-Michael
Anyone for a Mutiny ?