Questions regarding IBM TS4300 Library

[staun]

Today we are using a quite stable IBM TS3310 with LTO4 drives. But my backup window it taking too long, so instead of investing more in our old library I was thinking off getting a new IBM TS4300. I read that some of you are using this library, so perhaps you can help me.

- Any pro/ cons using TS4300, is it stable
- Do you use LTO7 or LTO8 (not taking current shortage of LTO-8 tapes in mind)
- I was planning on using HH drives instead of FH and accept the lower speed and perhaps get 3 HH drives vs 2 FH drives as I do now.
- Should I go for SAS or FC drives. Is SAS actually good enough?
- How many I/O station slots does it have (never mind - at last I found this in a white paper - it seems to have 5 I/O slots for each expansion/ base module)

Thank you in advance

[Dima P.]

Hello Jørgen,

From RnD perspective we've been using IBM libraries for a long time and we are very happy with them. Also found this white paper IBM Tape Library family and Veeam Availability Suite, might come handy. Also here a huge manual for IBM TS4300, hope it helps as well. Cheers!

[staun]

Thanks Dima, - already got these. I was looking for a In-Real-Life perspective. Manuals are good, but some times a word from daily use is worth a lot.

[skrause]

I think the throughput specs on the HH drives (at least the LTO7 ones) on the TS4300 are the same as the FH ones. Which is useful since a single TS4300 unit is 3U instead of 4U like the TS3X00 so you can't put two FH drives in one.

We are going to be buying the TS4300 for our new datacenter build out (dual HH LTO7), but it likely won't be in the loop for a few months.