I've never used this product but it seems to provide functionality that is already present on the filer; i.e. an NDMP TAPE Server. You could buy one or more LTO2 drives (either SCSI or FC version), appropriate card(s) for one of your filers, and connect the drives up directly to one of your filers. You would then configure the backup software to perform NDMP backups in one of two ways depending on the filer. For the filer with the drives physically attached the setup can be considered local because the filer is functioning as both the NDMP DATA and TAPE servers. For the other filers without physical connectivity to the drives these function in a 3-way setup, with the filer without the drives functioning as the NDMP DATA server, and the filer with the drives functioning as the NDMP TAPE server.

The choice is yours, use the functionality native to a filer (or as required by NDMP v2 actually) or buy a seperate box to provide it.

-Chris

P.S. Filer LTO II support at the moment is limited (HP-SCSI only) but support for the other manufactures/interface types is said to be forthcoming in the near future...meaning weeks if not days away.

-----Original Message----- From: "Holland, William L" hollandwl@state.gov To: "'toasters@mathworks.com'" toasters@mathworks.com Date: Fri, 27 Jun 2003 13:07:21 -0400 Subject: Dinostor TapeServer

Anyone out there using this product? (http://www.dinostor.com). If so, with which tape library and which backup software package? Since I'm setting up my NetApps from scratch and have no FCP equipment I would really like to build a GbE solution. However, the boss wants LTO2 and so far no one has a GbE solution for LTO2 -- most seem to be several months away. Also, I don't want to dedicate a tape library to one particular NetApp as I expect we will get a couple more in the not so distant future.

Thanks again.