STK L180 Tape Library
The StorageTek L180 is a robotic, tape-based archival system. It is directly attached to K2. It has four tape drives that are SCSI-connected to K2's I/O subsystem. Data transfers to/from the archive are first buffered on 2 TB (raw) of disk that is part of a TP9400 raid array. The TP9400 is also directly attached to K2. All transfers between the TP9400 and the L180 are handled by SGI's DMF program. At this time (circa April 2004), the L180's raw capacity is 16 TB, but the current DMF license restricts use to 10 TB. The maximum configurable capacity of the L180 is 28 TB (uncompressed). As the demand for archiving dictates, and as funding permits, TAMU Supercomputing will progressively increase both the archive's raw capacity and DMF's coverage.
Use of all data storage facilities provided by TAMU Supercomputing, including the L180, is subject to the following established policies:
Instructions on the use of the tape library may be found at our Archiving User Guide.