Legato Alphastor - Yay or Nay?

[tuckerchops]

Greetings,

Does anyone out there have any experience with Legato's Alphastor product? We are looking to implement media management and tracking with multiple tape libraries. Any and all feedback is welcome. Thanks!!

 

[mrbigglesworth]

Anything, and I mean ANYTHING is better than SmartMedia. Although the creator of SmartMedia (Sean Ellis) would tend to disagree, Legato has already begun a strategic realliance in which all SM developers are now under the Alphastor umbrella. So my suggestion to you would be to forgo SM or any other 3 rd party solution and go with AlphaStor right off the bat. Alphastor is also more capable of handling multiple "data zones" and "data movers" and can actually tell you about tapes that have been moved offsite. All this with canned reporting that makes you look cool to your boss - "we currently have blah blah % of tapes blah blah." We've piloted here and it rocks (again this is compared to SM), now we're faced with getting the duckets together to buy it.

 

[1407]

I agree, I have installed SmartMedia, PAIN IN THE NECK.

AlphaStor is the way to go

 

[bommer]

I would get some references from Legato before installing. We had a department install AlphaStor and he had some problems. It runs a separate Windows server and takes over the administration of your Networker systems. If Alphastor hoses up, your backup systems are down. He removed it and quit shortly after. This was over six months ago, I'm sure Legato has eliminated the bugs by now. It looks like a great product if it runs as advertised.

 

[marqumg]

AS lives up to its billing compare to SM.

regards

 

[ShaunEllisLegato]

Mr bigglesworth,

thank you for your post, especially endorsing our AlphaStor product so eloquently.

I'd like to provide you with some information regarding a few points in your posting though.

I was not the creator of SmartMedia, although I was certainly an advocator. I joined Legato in Sept 1999, when V1.2-003 was already out of the door. I joined as a technical marketing engineer out of Digital/Compaq and a user of SmartMedia. I, briefly, became the product manager and was responsible for versions V1.4.1 and V1.5. I was also responsible for getting AlphaStor on the Legato's price book. It is not my position that SmartMedia is better than AlphaStor. Indeed, Alphastor has always been capable of functions that SmartMedia has not, such as the reporting you highlighted so well in your reply.

The SmartMedia engineering team have not be reassigned to AlphaStor. We have retained the full engineering team for AlphaStor in its original location. the SmartMedia engineering team always worked on both SmartMedia and NetWorker, and they continue to do so, supporting existing SmartMedia customers until the customer base moves over to AlphaStor. There are still a few minor functions, and some platform support issues that are being resolved before all customers migrate.

As for the creation, and history, of SmartMedia, it is an OEM version of SGI's OpenVault which is, in turn, an implementation of parts of the IEEE mass storage model, originally initiated by Rich Wrenn of Digital/Compaq/HP. AlphaStor is, basically, an imlementation of that model also, with the added value of media management on top of device management.

Once more, thank you for your strong support of AlphaStor, it is good to see a happy customer, and I wish you much luck in finding your ducets.

Regards

Shaun Ellis (not Sean)

 

[jkalbus]

Hello Shaun Ellis,

we are currently investigating our backup environment. And together with Libraries from STK it works well together with SmartMedia.

The "platform issue" you mentioned prevents us from even considering AlphaStor. Our Networkers run on Solaris or HP UX, ACSLS is running on Solaris... well and SmartMedia too.

The AlphaStor Server does not - not until now - but I am longing for a replacement of SmartMedia. It is a pain in the ass to set up, but if it works it works...

Waiting for new announcments from Legato

Yours

Johanes

 

[Rexxy]

hehehe I was all prepared to respond in regards to Shaun not being the actual creator, but one of the initial "digital" people involved in the installation and configuration. Altho we did blame him here at "now HP" as being one of the smartmedia instigators...hehehe (until he jumped ship and went U.S Legato)....

smartmedia was a big waste of money when we had invested in it, way too soon, but i think was a good stepping stone/learning curve for Legato for their work with AlphaStor.

If your not using SAN tech, then AS is a bloody expensive Tape management system. But once we finally move into SAN thruout our unix Env here, I cant wait to get AS fully running....

 

[jgarmer]

Wait till next release. There are some things they are still working out. Unless you some extra time to work though them.

joe

 

[spaceball]

Hi,
Well, don't know if anyone ist still interested in news about Alphastor, we just finished the implementation of Alphastor for Solaris (yes, it's true) and even if the way through the installation was a torture (takes more then half a Year from 1st releas was announced until a release plus several patches was "installable&quot it's worth to do this again. (Hope devellopers and managers have done there lessons, finally).

Regards spaceball