[comp.unix.large] Looking for Optical Disk Jukebox

mlindsey@x102c.ess.harris.com (Lindsey MS 04396) (09/10/90)

Does anyone out there have any experience with using an optical disk jukebox.
We are looking for such a beast.  Ideally it should be read/write, but WORM
would be acceptable.

It needs to be SPARC compatable, capable of being conected to SCSI or VME.

BTW, I don't know any large eunuchs, but there was a 6'11" tranvestite that 
attended the University of Florida in the late 70's...

"Waste your brain, wax your board, and pray for waves!"   Woody in E.G.A.E.
/earth is 98% full!  Please delete anyone you can!	 (anonymous)
$teve Lindsey		|-)	uunet!x102a!mlindsey
(407) 727-5893		:-)	mlindsey@x102a.ess.harris.com

edp@oscar.kodak.com (Ed Pendzik (Sun Consulting)) (09/13/90)

eastman kodak has great large worm jukeboxes.
150 disks, each disk is about 6.3 gigabytes in size.
connects to suns via scsi.

please ring jeff harris @ kodak (716) 588-0659


		Ed Pendzik

rmc@nixtdc.uucp (Russell Crook) (09/13/90)

Siemens/Nixdorf has an NFS-based optical jukebox system available
called FMWORM.  It supports both 5.25" (Cygnet) and 12" (Sony) jukeboxes;
the larger jukeboxes each support up to 350 GB, and you can have several
on a single host, and multiple hosts.  Since it is NFS compliant,
anything that works to a normal NFS file server will work to FMWORM
(if you account for jukebox latency, etc.).  Files are NOT staged;
incremental writes to an existing file do not cause a rewrite of the whole
file.

If you are interested, I have more details available.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Russell Crook, Nixdorf Toronto Development Centre
2235 Sheppard Ave. E., Willowdale, Ontario, Canada M2J 5B5
Ph: +1 416 496 8510     UUCP: uunet!utai!imax!nixtdc!rmc or rmc@nixtdc.UUCP
"... technology so advanced, even we don't know what it does."

troyb@hpdmd48.boi.hp.com (Troy Bergstrand) (09/13/90)

HP sells a Rewritable optical disk autochanger.  The official part #'s and $:

C1700A   Rewritable opt. disk autochanger Series 6300 Model 20GB/A    $39,950
Opt. 231 Delete media (all but one cartridge).                       -$ 6,450
Opt. AFJ Add on 2.0m SCSI cable                                       $    50

Ordering the C1700A gets you 32 pieces of media totalling 20GB of storage.
I have heard that if one orders the C1700A without using Opt. 231, the
shipping of the product can be delayed.  It appears that it is best to order
the product with Opt 231, and then order as much media as desired separately.
(The media is the bottleneck in the shipping process).

Troy Bergstrand		Hewlett-Packard Disk Storage Systems
			phone:   (208) 323-4546
			Email:   troyb@hpdmlsw.boi.hp.com

wayne@dsndata.uucp (Wayne Schlitt) (09/16/90)

In article <9170001@hpdmd48.boi.hp.com> troyb@hpdmd48.boi.hp.com (Troy Bergstrand) writes:
> [ ... ]
>
> I have heard that if one orders the C1700A without using Opt. 231, the
> shipping of the product can be delayed.  It appears that it is best to order
> the product with Opt 231, and then order as much media as desired separately.
> (The media is the bottleneck in the shipping process).

hmmm... i am not so sure about that.  we just got our r/w optical disk
from hp and it took over 3 months to get the drive.  we ordered our
media at 16:50 and i had the box on my desk by 09:45 the next morning.
we only order 11 disks, but i doubt that order 30-40 disks would take
that much longer...


-wayne

leadley@uhura.cc.rochester.edu (Scott Leadley) (09/17/90)

	Pinnacle Micro, sells a 6GB, 10 disk jukebox for approximately $10K.
I've used one of their single disk systems but have no experience with this
product.
-- 
					Scott Leadley - leadley@cc.rochester.edu

grl@brb.dmt.csiro.au (Greg Lehmann) (09/20/90)

leadley@uhura.cc.rochester.edu (Scott Leadley) writes:


>	Pinnacle Micro, sells a 6GB, 10 disk jukebox for approximately $10K.
>I've used one of their single disk systems but have no experience with this
>product.

If its the one I think it is then it is more like 5GB. I have seen one and
heard about a 50 disk and 2 drive version. They also have a REO 1300 which
is just a 2 drive 2 disk version. This latter has the nice feature of being
able to access two sides on the 2 disks as a single filesystem. This means
you can have 500MB file-systems instead of the usual 250MB (per side) ones.
I don't know if you can have the 50 disk juke-box configured to do this. It
would offer more flexibility if you could mix 2 disk and single disk file-
systems in the one jukebox. Anybody know?

-- 
Greg Lehmann,
CSIRO Division of Manufacturing Technology,     Telephone: +61 7 377 3877
c/- Dept. of Mining & Metallurgical Eng.,       Facsimile: +61 7 371 4461
The University of Queensland, QLD 4072.         Internet:  grl@brb.dmt.csiro.au

leadley@uhura.cc.rochester.edu (Scott Leadley) (09/20/90)

In article <grl.653813111@groucho> grl@brb.dmt.csiro.au (Greg Lehmann) writes:
>leadley@uhura.cc.rochester.edu (Scott Leadley) writes:
>>	Pinnacle Micro, sells a 6GB, 10 disk jukebox for approximately $10K.
>>I've used one of their single disk systems but have no experience with this
>>product.
> ... a REO 1300 [a dual disk system, not a jukebox]
> ... has the nice feature of being
>able to access two sides on the 2 disks as a single filesystem. This means
>you can have 500MB file-systems instead of the usual 250MB (per side) ones.
>I don't know if you can have the 50 disk juke-box configured to do this.

	The advertisement I saw implies that with a custom driver (which they
can supply) you can bind all surfaces together as a large virtual disk.  I like
this feature, but would only use it in situtations where picker thrashing on
files spanning surface boundaries was unlikely or unimportant (i.e. you have
LOTS of time).  Pinnacle's sales address is:

	Pinnacle Micro
	15265 Alton Pkwy.
	Irvine, CA  92718

	voice (outside CA):	(800)533-7070
	voice (inside CA):	(714)727-3300


	If you need reasonable response time along with the advantages of a
large virtual disk and cheap magneto optical storage, you need to a system that
caches files in use on a magnetic disk (commonly refered to as "staging").
There are two vendors that I know of selling integrated NFS servers using
magneto optical storage and staging:

	Epoch Systems
	313 Boston Post Rd. West
	Marlborough, MA  01752

	voice: (800)US-EPOCH


	Zetaco
	6850 Shady Oak Rd.
	Eden Praire, MN  55344

	voice:	(612)941-9480
	FAX:	(612)941-1395


	Anyone interested in those systems might also be interested in the
NFS server from:

	Auspex Systems
	2952 Bunker Hill Lane
	Santa Clara, CA  95054

	voice:	(408)492-0900
	FAX:	(408)492-0909
	email:	sales@auspex.com or uunet!auspex!sales

that uses SCSI disk arrays.


	Now what I'd like are reviews from people who have actually managed an
Epoch I (Epoch Systems), NETstor Server (Zetaco) or NS 5000 (Auspex Systems).
-- 
					Scott Leadley - leadley@cc.rochester.edu

geller@tfd.UUCP (David Geller) (09/29/90)

I know that Sun Coast Softworks (FLA) now has their Optimem SCSI
driver available for IBM RS6000 systems (they've had a Sun version
for some time). Some sites will be using this driver to manage
Optimem drives in Cygnet 1800 series jukeboxes. I think I have
their number and address. Email if you want it. They have a custom
file system but will have, I'm told, an NFS version shortly.

David Geller