April 28, 2004
HP is announcing the end of sales of the three remaining DDS-3 DAT tape drives for HP NonStop S-series servers, effective October 31, 2004. These DDS-3 tape drives (product IDs 5142, 5142-1SE, and 5142-2SE) are being discontinued from sales in order to more effectively promote the replacement DAT 72 tape drive products, which will become available in May 2004. Orders for the 5142, 5142-1SE, and 5142-2SE products will be accepted and filled through October 31, 2004.
The DDS-3 tape drive product set became generally available in April 1997. Between their introduction in 1997 and March 2004, DDS-3 DAT tape drives accounted for nearly half of the total unit volume of tape drives shipped for use with NonStop servers. Clearly, the DDS tape format has been a popular choice with NonStop server customers.
The replacement products for the DDS-3 tape drives are products from the HP DAT 72 tape drive product set to be formally introduced in May 2004 (product IDs are 5242, 5242ACL, and 5242-2SE). The DAT 72 tape drives deliver faster throughput and higher per-media storage capacity than the DDS-3 tape drives. Additionally, the DAT 72 products are capable of reading tapes written on DDS-3 tape drives and writing in formats readable by the DDS-3, making the DAT 72 both a sound future investment choice and one that provides investment protection for customers with existing DDS-3 tape media libraries.
Furthermore, while the drive is supported in the Release Version Update (RVU) G06.23 of the HP NonStop Kernel operating system without additions or changes, the DAT 72 tape drives are also supported back to the RVU G06.10 when Software Product Revisions (SPRs) for the Open Systems Management (OSM) application are applied, making the DAT 72 a complete replacement choice for the existing DDS-3 tape drive product set.
All of this supports the assertion that the impact of migrating from the DDS-3 tape drives to the replacement DAT 72 product set will be much less of an issue than that of moving to an entirely new tape storage platform.
Customers should also be aware that HP has a policy of ending hardware maintenance and support for NonStop products five years after the last sale of the product. This is the usual HP practice.
SCSI interface tape drives
- Product ID: 5142
- Description: DDS-3 tape drive, single cartridge table-top tape drive
- Product ID: 5142-1SE
- Description: DDS-3 tape drive unit, NEBS compliant, 19-in. rack mountable
- Product ID: 5142-2SE
- Description: DDS-3 2 tape drive unit, NEBS compliant, 19-in. rack mountable
Replacement products
- Product ID: 5242
- Description: HP DAT 72, single cartridge table-top tape drive
- Product ID: 5242ACL
- Description: HP DAT 72 tape drive with 6-media slot automatic cartridge loader
- Product ID: 5242-2SE
- Description: HP DAT 72 2-tape drive unit, NEBS compliant, 19-in. rack mountable
- Product ID: 514M
- Description: Media Magazine for ACL equipped DAT tape drives
Key date
The last date to place orders for the DDS-3 tape drive product set is October 31, 2004.
Contact information
For more information, contact your sales representative.
This news is published on NonStop Computing websites. April 2004.
|
Printable version
