August 22, 2003
HP is announcing the end of sales of the DLT 7000 tabletop tape drive for NonStop S-series servers, effective December 31, 2003 . The DLT 7000 (product ID 5158ACL) will be discontinued from sales because HP’s supplier is ending sales of this product effective on the same date. Orders for the 5158ACL placed afterDecember 31, 2003 , will be filled only if inventory is available.
The replacement for the 5158ACL product is the Super DLT tabletop tape drive (product ID 5258ACL). The 5258ACL product is backward-read compatible and has the ability to read tapes written by the 5158ACL DLT 7000 tape drive, provided the tape media is DLT Mark IV. It is important to point out that the 5258ACL is only capable of writing to Super DLT media. Super DLT tape media cannot be read with any tape drives other than Super DLT tape drives.
The 5158ACL became available in the fourth quarter of 1999. The 5258ACL Super DLT tape drive became generally available in November 2001, and since its introduction, the unit shipment volume has steadily increased in proportion to the total number of DLT tabletop tape drives shipped. In the second quarter of 2003, it accounted for more than 50 percent of DLT tabletop tape drive shipments.
Ending sales of the 5158ACL DLT 7000 tabletop tape drive 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 5258ACL Super DLT tape drive will not be able to read that Super DLT tape on a system that has only DLT 7000 tape drives attached. However, tapes written by any DLT 7000 tape drive obtained from the NonStop Enterprise Division of HP are readable by the newer 5258ACL Super DLT and other Super DLT tape drives available from the NonStop Enterprise Division, provided Mark IV tape media is used.
Further, the 5258ACL Super DLT tabletop tape drive also requires a later release version update (RVU) of the NonStop Kernel operating system, RVU G06.14 or later. Because of the later RVU and the fact that some data interchange capability is removed, moving to the replacement product is a larger undertaking than simply adding like tape drives and tape storage capacity. Customers need to be aware of the tape media and read/write compatibility constraints along with the NonStop Kernel operating system requirements for the 5258ACL replacement product well ahead of any planned tape storage expansion or migration for their pre-RVU G06.14 operating system running 5158 DLT 7000 tape drives.
Tape written by 5158ACL DLT 7000
5158ACL DLT 7000
5258ACL Super DLT
- Read - yes (DLT Mark IV media only)
- Write - no
Tape written by 5258ACL Super DLT
5158ACL DLT 7000
5258ACL Super DLT
- Read - yes (Super DLT media only)
- Write - yes (Super DLT media only)
Further, customers need to 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, supported by a statement of policy on this topic.
Affected product
Product ID: 5158ACL, DLT 7000 tabletop tape drive
Replacement product
Product ID: 5258ACL, Super DLT tabletop tape drive (requires Super DLT media and NonStop Kernel Release Version Update G06.14 or later; delivers backward-read compatibility with DLT 7000 Mark IV media)
Key date
The last date to place orders for the 5158ACL DLT 7000 product is December 31, 2003.
This news is published on NonStop Computing websites. August 2003.
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