I requested information from those who had experience with the optical jukebox
management software called "AMASS" that I believed was from HP.
Many thanks for the replies and especially to those who offered that I may contact them
personally to discuss the product in more detail.
Several respondents pointed out that AMASS is in fact a product from
Advanced Archival Products (AAP) that appears to be resold by HP. Certainly,
it is listed in an HP optical products catalog as being "available directly from HP".
In general the responses concerning the product were positive. Edited
comments follow:
Mike Blandford <mikey@truman.lanl.gov>
I have used AMASS on a machine running 4.1.3. The jukebox was a
HP 200T ( 144 1.3 gig platters ). It works fine, but the volume
management could stand a little improvement.
dmcmilla@engr.soltech.com (Derald McMillan)
I have installed the HP AMASS software on a SPARC 20 running Solaris
2.4 working with an HP 20xt Jukebox and the installation went very
smoothly
I think it is a good product
daniel@sar3.CANR.Hydro.Qc.CA (Daniel Hurtubise)
I find the application to be quite reliable and robust. I have only had
one problem and AAP's technical staff got me out of it promptly.
"Patrick L. Nolan" <pln@egret1.Stanford.EDU>
In my experience the software does as advertised.
The main benefit and defecit of AMASS, as I see it, is that it creates
its own filesystem which can span multiple disk platters. On the
good side, this means that you don't have to know where your files
are stored. The details of managing disk mounting can be hidden.
If a disk has been migrated out of the jukebox, the software will still
keep track of its contents and ask for it as needed. You can override
this behavior by assigning certain filesystems to certain platters.
On the bad side, you lose control over where data is stored. The contents
of a directory can be scattered over several disks, which might slow
access. The filesystem is nonstandard, so you can't exchange data
with other systems. Deleted files are not really deleted; instead
their space is marked "dead", and the only way to recover dead space
is to reformat the disk.
Many thanks again to:
Kevin.Sheehan@uniq.com.au (Kevin Sheehan {Consulting Poster Child})
dmcmilla@engr.soltech.com (Derald McMillan)
Phil Mawson <pmawson@oxhp.com>
daniel@sar3.CANR.Hydro.Qc.CA (Daniel Hurtubise)
"Patrick L. Nolan" <pln@egret1.Stanford.EDU>
"KEVIN E. KELLEHER" <SYSKEL@NSSLA.NSSL.UOKNOR.EDU>
Mike Blandford <mikey@truman.lanl.gov>
Duncan Laidlaw
System Administrator
Placer Dome Inc.
Project Development Division
P.O. Box 49330
Bentall Postal Station
1400-1055 Dunsmuir Street
Vancouver, B.C.
V7X 1P1
Tel (604) 661-1918
Fax (604) 661-1571
E-mail duncan@placer1.wimsey.com
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : Fri Sep 28 2001 - 23:10:33 CDT