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VARBusiness Labs looks at the last in our series of storage products: tape libraries. The libraries we received came from a cross section of the industry. Four of them are presented here; the rest can be found online at www.varbusiness.com/labs/default.asp.
All the drives we tested contain at least one tape drive and a robotic arm that loads and unloads tapes from the drive(s). The libraries also have additional tape storage slots where thetape cartridges are housed when not required for reading or writing.
All the units were equipped with DLT 7000 drives, except for one with the newest DLT 8000 and one with Sony AIT2 drives.
ATL P1000
With room for 30 DLT tapes, ATL Products Inc.'s P1000 boasts the largest tape capacity of all units in this month's review. Further distinguishing the unit from the pack is the library's radically different architecture. Its prism architecture uses a PCI bus for external I/O. Although the current implementation offers no significant features that take advantage of this design, the architecture does allow for upgrade possibilities, such as FDDI or ATM connections, or server processing with single-board computers.
Installation of the P1000 was simple, although the internal physical arrangement of the ATL P1000 is quite different from that of the other entries. Storage bins are located at different sections of the enclosure. At the front of the library are five fixed storage bins and two removable bulk packs; each hold eight tapes. Thus, there is no viewing window at the front of the unit because the front- loaded bulk packs block viewing from the front. Instead, our floor- standing unit includes a viewing window at the top, so operators do not have to crouch down to use the window. Nine more bins are arranged at the back of the unit bringing the total capacity to 30 tapes. Our test unit is equipped with four hot-swappable Quantum DLT 7000 tape drives. Configurations for fewer drives are also available. The tape-handling robotic arm is located in the middle of the enclosure, between the tape storage bins at the front and back.
The P1000's operator panel is a large, touch-screen display with a browser-like interface that is easy to navigate. Full control of the library can be achieved at the...