MASSEY%CMS1@TQMS.LLNL.GOV ("Massey%CMS1@ICDC.LLNL.GOV Bldg235 Rm1064 L-352 422-1958", 415) (05/16/88)
> I was hoping that the experience of readers of this list might be > able to help us... > > Our site needs to add some additional disk storage to our system. > Presently, all our existing drives are vanilla DEC (predominently > RA81 drives hanging off an HSC50). We are thinking about trying > non-Dec drives for the first time. We'll be making a choice in > about a week and a half and DEC is slipping daily... > > Does anyone have any experience, comments, or advice on alternative > vendors we might look at for drives in the 1/2GB - 1GB capacity > range? In particular, we are looking at SI and Emulex but comments > on others would be welcome and appreciated. Are non-Dec solutions > reliable? How's the performance? Are there maintenance problems > (all our current hardware is under Dec service agreements)? When > problems do arise, does a lot of "finger pointing" occur? An so on... If you are on DEC maintenance, you may want to consider sticking with DEC drives. In the very near future, (MAY?) your maintenance people should be installing a service product called VAXSIM-PLUS that is supposed to be able to tell when DEC drives are going to fail before they fail, giving you a chance to save your data before it gets lost. DEC says they can do this because their DSA drives implement more status and error signals than any other (bar none) DSA compatible drive on the market. DEC has accumulated statistics on what these signals mean in relation to the health of the drive and they feel confident that they can predict failures before they occur. In most cases, the value of the data on the drive outweighs the difference in cost or performance between two similar drives so a drive that can be considered "crash-proof", at least as far as the data is concerned, is quite an asset. Warren Massey Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory P.O. Box 808, L-352 Livermore, Calif. 94550 MASSEY%CMS1@TQMS.LLNL.GOV MASSEY%CMS1@ICDC.LLNL.GOV MASSEY%CMS1@CIRCUS.LLNL.GOV The opinions expressed herein are purely my own and do not represent in any way the opinions of my employer. No claims are made as to the accuracy or correctness of information contained herein.