IBM TotalStorage Enterprise Tape Drive 3592
The IBM drive supplied to the Lab, when compared to the other units, was a bit -bare bones". In an enterprise environment the drive/s would be mounted in a cabinet and not be the collections of bits that the Lab tested.
The native capacity of the each tape cartridge, which is roughly the same physical size as an LTO2 cartridge, is 300GB; only the Quantum SDLT-600 that we tested can boast the same native capacity. The cartridge has a simple write protect toggle and one side of the cartridge has a large clear barcode for vaulting purposes, although the drive we received did not have the facility to read the bar code. The Quantum unit is also the only one tested that comes close to the IBM's claimed 40MBps native data transfer rate.
The drive incorporates ECC and each cartridge features factory written servo tracks to improve head alignment and data integrity.
The tape drive's J70 controller, which supports multiple tape drives, allows the unit to attach to ESCON and FICON IBM server interfaces, supporting attachment to up to eight of the former and four of the latter interfaces. The FICOM attachment boasts 2GB full duplex at distances up to 10km in a direct-attached environment.
For our test scenario we connected one of the unit's two fibre channel ports to our server which unfortunately did not have a second fibre channel so we were unable to take advantage of the drive's dual-channel 2GBps data interface.
Even using only a single Fibre Channel connection, the IBM appears to have a distinct advantage and the vendor's quoted transfer rate appears to be borne out in our testing.
We managed to squeeze 30.7MBs throughput out of the IBM while performing the backup test of pre-compressed files. Because of the complexity of the uncompressed backup, transfer speed was a lot lower at 14.5MBps; only the Overland drive was faster in this test and then only by 0.1MBps; this was most likely a product of a server bottle neck and not a true indication of the drive's maximum transfer rate.
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| Product | IBM TotalStorage Enterprise Tape Drive 3592 |
| Price | $55,000; tapes $470 each |
| Vendor | IBM |
| Phone | 132 426 |
| Web | www.storage.ibm.com |
| Interoperability |  ½ |
| Very good platform support. | |
| Futureproofing |  |
| Good expansion potential; dual Fibre Channel ports and redundant power supplies. | |
| ROI |  |
| Very expensive when considered for all but the highest-end enterprise applications. | |
| Service |  ½ |
| One-year RTB warranty. | |
| Rating |  |
