Monday, November 6, 2006

Tape Cartridge Extended Models up to 700 MB

Another announcement last week was made for the 3592 tape cartridges. There are three new 'Extended Data' models with up to 700 GB rewritable native capacity. The models indicate whether the cartridges are labeled, initialized or not. There are three additional 'Extended Worm' types available. Once again some more capacity on a cartridge. So be it. But what I find interesting are some compatibility issues announced at the same time. On a previous occasion I mentioned one of the drawbacks of the TS7700 Virtualization engine : "The TS7700 connects to the TS1120 E05 but it has to run in emulation mode as a 3952 J1A. This also means you cannot fully use its speed nor the larger 500MB cartridges.". Well, that's been lifted now : "TS7700 will support 700GB using native TS1120 E05 drive support" and the 3592 J1A emulation mode is no longer needed. Apparently no such support will be implemented on the 3494 B10 en B20 Virtual Tape Systems.
Take a look at the software requirements too : z/OS 1.5 is needed for these new media. You will need z/VSE 3.1.2, z/VM 5.1.0 and z/TPF 5.1 for the other operating systems.

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