ADIC Scalar i500

ADIC's Scalar family of tape libraries have traditionally delivered an impressive range of innovative features with its iPlatform and iLayer technologies offering enterprise level scalability and management. First introduced in the Scalar i2000 library, ADIC has integrated these two technologies into its latest Scalar i500 to deliver the same features to mid-sized businesses. A big idea behind the i500 is that companies can buy the capacity they need now and expand easily as backup demand increases.

The i500 library begins with the 5U base unit which provides 36 tape slots and support for a pair of tape drives. Once you outgrow this you can currently add up to two 9U expansion units with each offering an extra 96 slots and support for four more tape drives. The iPlatform robotics design comes into play here as you can add the expansion units without incurring any downtime and they can be positioned above or below the base unit. The changer arm robotics operate vertically through the centre of each module, new units are connected directly without requiring complex pass-through mechanisms and the entire process is tool-free.

Tape drives choices currently extend to LTO-2 and LTO-3 with either SCSI or FC (fibre channel) interfaces. At present the drives can only be directly attached to a host server or FC switch but plans are afoot to integrate the same I/O blades as found in the i2000. These aggregate the tape drive FC ports for connection to an FC switch in a SAN and also provide additional management capabilities.

Adding extra drives in the expansion units doesn't affect their slot count and you can elect to have a six-slot import/export bay in the main unit and up to eighteen more in each expansion module. To ensure you're not paying over the top for unused capacity ADIC uses a simple licensing system for the library slots. These are licensed in increments of 46 so it's possible to add an expansion module but only activate those slots you actually need. We were also advised by ADIC that it plans to increase the expansion capabilities of the i500 to support four expansion modules by October allowing it to handle up to eighteen tape drives and 404 cartridge slots. Seeing as Quantum announced it was acquiring ADIC in May this year we would expect tape drive support to extend to DLT drives. However, at the time of writing ADIC was unable to confirm this.

We've always been impressed with ADIC's build quality and the i500 is no exception as it is extremely well constructed. There's plenty of redundancy on tap as all components are connected to an internal power bus which is serviced by up to two hot-plug power supplies. For local management all ADIC libraries incorporate a touch-screen and control panel which can be locked down when not in use. Remote management is via ADIC's well designed web interface which extends all the same functions as the local panel. Its home page provides a full system summary of the library and various components and offers plenty of wizard based assistance for initial setup and general configuration. Graphics of the base unit and expansion modules are provided with quick links to the drives whilst a colour coded graphic displays all installed drives, the slots and their physical position.

Virtual libraries can be used to place selected slots and drives in partitions which will appear to your network backup software as independent libraries. This is a common feature on many competing libraries but the iPlatform technology adds a useful new dimension when it comes to expanding capacity. Many libraries that require pass-through mechanisms to link modules together cannot allow partitions to be spread across these. Consequently, each expansion unit represents a separate physical unit that cannot be added to existing virtual libraries. As ADIC's loader mechanism has total access to all modules as they are added it allows partitions to be spread across multiple expansion units.