MSL6030 using Ultrium 960

[Lacrosse]

Is anyone using this configuration looking for feedback on reliability and performance....thinking about a purchase but want to make sure it is a good choice

[Bernhard Mueller]

Hello,

this is definitly a good choice, _prerequisite_ that you are confident, you can feed the tape drive fast enough so that it keeps streaming.

Using DataProtector and an EVA4000 w/20 disks to backup a litte more than 300GB of DB files (offline) took 1 hour 5 minutes. Same DB with an online backup amounted to appr. 170GB w/ backup time 35 Minutes.

So if it is an add-on to an existing system, make sure you do not have a bottleneck elsewhere, in which case you could save a lot of money by staying at LTO2...

Wrt reliability the MSL w/LTO is also a good choice. Though naturally there is little long term experience with LTO3 drives....

Regards,
Bernhard

[Jaclyn Rothe]

LTO 960 drives minimum requirement is a u320 scsi card. This is recommended to be a PCI card for reliability.

You can expect 20mb/s - 80mb/s from a LTO 3 unit depending if you are using LTO 3 tapes, and the system performance of your server.

You can run the LTT sysperf test to assess your current system throughput. Defragmenting your drives is recommended.
10 harddrives in a RAID 5 array is the best configuration and will send you on your way to 80mb/s transfer rate. Get library and tape tools here:
http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/DriverDownload.jsp?pnameOID=406731&locale=en_US&taskId=135&prodSeriesId=406729&prodTypeId=12169

See PAT testing for more info on LTO configuration and download the PAT tool for testing your system.
PAT:
http://www.hp.com/support/pat

Check server compatibility at: http://www.hp.com/go/connect

See the LTO 3 white pages for in depth advice how to get maximum performance from the drive.
White pages: http://h71028.www7.hp.com/ERC/downloads/5983-0148EN.pdf