November 10, 2003
HP is announcing the end of sales of the three remaining Super DLT tape drives for NonStop S-series servers, effective March 31, 2004. These Super DLT tape drives (product IDs 5257, 5257ACL, and 5258ACL) will be discontinued from sales because HP’s supplier is ending sales of these products effective on the same date. Orders for the 5257, 5257ACL, and 5258ACL placed after March 31, 2004, will be filled only if inventory is available.
The Super DLT tape drive product set became generally available in November 2001 and since their introduction the unit shipment volume has steadily increased in proportion to the total number of other tape drives shipped to the extent that between their introduction in 2001 and July 2003, Super DLT tape drives accounted for nearly half of the total unit volume of tape drives shipped for use with NonStop servers. Clearly the Super DLT tape drive has been a popular choice with NonStop server customers.
The replacement products for the Super DLT tape drives are products from the HP Ultrium LTO tape drive product set introduced in September 2003, (product Ids N1521A and N1524A). The HP Ultrium LTO tape drives deliver significantly faster throughput and much higher per-media storage capacity than the Super DLT tape drives and are priced comparatively. However, the HP Ultrium LTO products are not read or write compatible with the Super DLT tape format. For this reason it is important to highlight the fact that while there are huge performance and capacity gains in moving to the replacement tape drive products, this move will require a tape media migration strategy.
Ending sales of the Super DLT tape drive product set for NonStop S-series servers may affect customers that rely on the ability to interchange data between NonStop systems. For example, customers that require the ability to move data written to a Super DLT tape drive will not be able to read that Super DLT tape on a system that has only one of the replacement HP Ultrium LTO tape drives attached. Customers running both the Super DLT tape drives and their replacement HP Ultrium LTO tape drives should develop a strategy that will allow migration to the newer tape platform over time, while also allowing movement of data between servers. For example, a customer might choose to move one or more Super DLT tape drives to a server that also has HP Ultrium LTO drives attached, simply to enable data interchange. Other migration strategies are possible as well.
Migration to the HP Ultrium tape drive product set also requires a later release version update (RVU) of the NonStop Kernel operating system, G06.21 or later. Because of the requirement of a later RVU and the fact that data interchange capability can be impacted, moving to the replacement product set is a larger undertaking than simply adding like tape drives and tape storage capacity. Customers need to be aware of the tape media constraints along with the NonStop Kernel operating system requirements for the HP Ultrium LTO replacement products well in advance of any planned tape storage expansion or migration for their pre-RVU G06.21 servers running Super DLT tape drives.
Customers should also be made 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, supported by a statement of policy on this topic.
Affected products:
- Product ID: 5257 - Super DLT Tape Drive for S-series Tape Enclosures
- Product ID: 5257ACL - Super DLT Tape Drive w/10 Slot ACL for S-series Tape Enclosures
- Product ID: 5258ACL - Super DLT Tape Drive; Table Top
Replacement products:
- Product ID: N1524A - HP Ultrium LTO Tape Drive w/11 Slot ACL for S-series Tape Enclosures
- Product ID: N1525A - HP Ultrium LTO Tape Drive w/11 Slot ACL; Table Top
Key date: The last date to place orders for the Super DLT product set March 31, 2004.
This information is published on NonStop Computing websites. November 2003
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