A fast merry-go-round
Dell?s PowerVault 122T eight-slot carousel represents an affordable step up from single Quantum drives
THE CONSTANT GROWTH of business-supporting data will inevitably compel many midsize companies and departments of larger corporations to consider switching from DLT (digital linear tape) or LTO (linear tape open) single-drive backup units to solutions with greater capacity that require less manual control during the backup process.
Cost and compatibility are obvious primary concerns. Ideally the new solution should preserve the current investment in media and accessories (such as file cabinets and carrying cases), should be able to read and possibly write existing tapes, and should have only a moderate impact on the company budget. Many products from reputable vendors such as Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Quantum, and Seagate can satisfy compatibility requirements, but most of their entry-level autoloaders carry a price tag well above $10,000, a significant step up from the $1,500 price point of single drives.
A new autoloader from Dell presents an interesting, affordable alternative. The PowerVault 122T features eight slots for cartridges, a single DLT drive in a compact 2U rack-mountable enclosure, and an attractive price tag of $4,150. The unit that we reviewed installed easily, worked flawlessly, and did not take too much space in our rack. Our only complaint was the lack of remote management. But if this is not a concern for your organization, the PowerVault 122T is a great way to automate single-drive backup operations at a low cost.
The PowerVault 122T is built on the Benchmark VS80 drive, which is essentially a Quantum DLT-compatible unit with the same form factor but only half the height of the Quantum drive, so you can feed the unit the popular DLTtape IV media. Our test unit did not come with a bar code reader; however, for an additional $1,000 you can add this option at the time of the order.
At the center of its 17x24x3.5-inch enclosure, the 122T mounts a single tape drive surrounded by a carousel with eight cartridge slots. The front of the unit has a centrally positioned door to insert tapes into the carousel slots, a control panel with a two-line display, a series of LED status indicators, and four buttons to access local configuration and management features.
Connecting the unit to our server could not have been simpler. The back of the unit has two SCSI connectors, one to attach the server and the other for termination or to extend the SCSI bus to other units. We connected the SCSI cable from our server, set the termination, and moved to install the drivers for the 122T and the backup software (we used Veritas Backup Exec) on our Windows 2000 server. Not much excitement there: After we loaded the drivers from the CD included with the unit, both the OS and Backup Exec identified the unit correctly and we were quickly ready for our first backup.
We expected that loading tapes into the unit would be painfully slow, because the 122T does not have a magazine for cartridges, and the front door can only be opened by selecting options from the control panel. But we were mistaken. In fact, the process of loading a tape, closing the door, moving the tape to the slot, shifting to the next slot, and reopening the door happened faster than we could remove the next cartridge from its case.
Slightly disappointing is the inability to monitor the 122T remotely. No doubt to help keep the cost of the unit down, Dell doesn’t offer the remote management features that other PowerVault models have. But we think that remote management should be an option.
The backup and restore performance of the 122T were good. The nominal transfer rate of the VS80 is 3MBps, and using hardware compression promises to effectively double that. We measured a top transfer rate of more than 7MBps when backing up a range of files that took advantage of the hardware compression algorithm of the VS80. Backups of more common sets of files, such as a mix of spreadsheets and other typical business documents, moved at a rate closer to 3MBps. You shouldn’t have problems attaining similar or better performance in your environment.
We liked the easy setup, fast carousel operation, and good backup performance of the PowerVault 122T. Dell backs the unit with a three-year warranty and next-day, on-site support. If your administrators are struggling to feed tapes one by one into your current single-drive DLT unit, the eight slots of the 122T can provide much-needed relief, and dramatically simplify your backup operations, at a very appealing cost.
