Sun StorageTek SL8500 Tape Library from Sunstar.

Oracle's powerful StorageTek SL8500 modular library system delivers unprecedented value through reliability, consolidation, cost-savings and extreme scalability. It's the eco-friendly choice to meet your most insatiable data storage demands.

Don't stop for growth: upgrade without downtime

This library system's RealTime Growth capability lets you dynamically update the drives, slots, and microcode while the library is operating, eliminating growth disruptions, keeping data available to users. The system itself grows modularly to 32x its single-unit size just as fast as you need more capacity. And, you don't have to shut down production to expand capacity. You can smoothly scale from 1,448 usable slots and 64 tape drives to more than 70,000 slots ¹ and 448 drives in incremental, modular additions. The economy of scalability has never been greater.

An immediate replacement for the previous generation

The SL8500 modular library system represents some dramatic design improvements over its predecessor, the Sun StorageTek PowderHorn 9310 tape library. It includes many more redundant, field-replaceable components for improved availability. It also features a new set of advanced RaceTrack architecture robotics, which run on a faster oval path layout. This unique design accelerates tape loading to 1000 exchanges per hour, the industry's fastest rate, roughly double that of the 9310.

More savings from day one: floor space

This system's smaller rectangular form factor, a product of the new internal design, saves considerably more floor space in your data center. With a tape density of 50 slots per square foot, depending on drive type, it is almost double the density of the PowderHorn 9310, and your potential footprint savings can be huge. If you are a 9310 customer, the sooner you make the switch, trading up to the SL8500 modular library system, the more you'll save on space, operations, and maintenance over time. The savings can be as much as 50 percent on maintenance and operational expenses

Access and Simplicity

Designed for multiplatform consolidations

The SL8500 modular library system simplifies offline tape storage management and solves your interoperability issues. It gives you seamless heterogeneous channel attachment and support for mixed drives/media. That lets you share your mega-library across supercomputers, mainframes, servers, applications, and their preferred media types without requiring partition management.

Mix it up: you choose

The StorageTek Any Cartridge Any Slot technology lets you consolidate multiple heterogeneous libraries and seamlessly mix tape drive technologies. The SL8500 supports the T10000, T9840, and T9940 lines of tape drives, and midrange LTO, SDLT, and DLT-S4 drives, as well as VolSafe secure media technology to meet your compliance requirements.

You set the speed

The SL8500 modular tape library system can be configured to optimize your slower archive needs or your high-performance backup and restore needs. You can even choose the performance level of the robotics. There's no reason to pay for a fixed price/performance point anymore. Your requirements are more complex and warrant more simple flexibility. Now you have it.

No single point of failure

Hot-swappable and fully redundant components, including multiple robots, help keep the library running 24/7/365. It truly delivers state-of-the-art enterprise reliability, availability, and serviceability.

Performance

SL8500 (minimum configuration)

SL8500 (max. configuration of 32 libraries)¹

Throughput per hour, native (uncompressed)

T10000 (64 drives, 120 MB/sec) – 27.6 TB/hr
T9840C (64 drives, 30 MB/sec) – 6.9 TB/hr
T9840B (64 drives, 19 MB/sec) – 4.4 TB/hr
T9840A (64 drives, 10 MB/sec) – 2.3 TB/hr
T9940B (64 drives, 30 MB/sec) – 6.9 TB/hr
LTO 4 (64 drives, 120 MB/sec) – 27.6 TB/hr
LTO 3 (64 drives, 80 MB/sec) – 18.4 TB/hr
DLT-S4 (64 drives, 60 MB/sec) – 13.8 TB/hr
SDLT 600 (64 drives, 36 MB/sec) – 8.3 TB/hr

T10000 (448 drives, 120 MB/sec) 193.2 TB/hr
T9840C (448 drives, 30 MB/sec) – 48.3 TB/hr
T9840B (448 drives, 19 MB/sec) – 30.8 TB/hr
T9840A (448 drives, 10 MB/sec) – 16.1 TB/hr
T9940B (448 drives, 30 MB/sec) – 48.3 TB/hr
LTO 4 (448 drives, 120 MB/sec) – 193.2 TB/hr
LTO 3 (448 drives, 80 MB/sec) – 128.8 TB/hr
DLT-S4 (448 drives, 60 MB/sec) – 96.6 TB/hr
SDLT 600 (448 drives, 36 MB/sec) – 58.1 TB/hr

Audit time (with redundant HandBots)

<12 min

<40 min

Average cell to drive time per HandBot

<11 sec per HandBot

Capacity

SL8500 (minimum configuration)

SL8500 (max. configuration of 32 libraries)¹

Capacity, native (uncompressed)

T10000 (1,448 carts, 500 GB/cart) – 724 TB
T9840C (1,448 carts, 40 GB/cart) – 58 TB
T9840B (1,448 carts, 20 GB/cart) – 29 TB
T9840A (1,448 carts, 20 GB/cart) – 29 TB
T9940B (1,448 carts, 200 GB/cart) – 290 TB
LTO 3 (1,448 carts, 400 GB/cart) – 579 TB
LTO 4 (1,448 carts, 800 GB/cart) – 1.16 PB
SDLT 600 (1,448 carts, 300 GB/cart) – 434 TB
DLT-S4 (1,448 carts, 800 GB/cart) – 1.16 PB

T10000 (70,000 carts, 500 GB/cart) – 35 PB
T9840C (70,000 carts, 40 GB/cart) – 2.8 PB
T9840B (70,000 carts, 20 GB/cart) – 1.4 PB
T9840A (70,000 carts, 20 GB/cart) – 1.4 PB
T9940B (70,000 carts, 200 GB/cart) – 14 PB
LTO 4 (70,000 carts, 800 GB/cart) – 56 PB
LTO 3 (70,000 carts, 400 GB/cart) – 28 PB
DLT-S4 (70,000 carts, 800 GB/cart) – 56 PB
SDLT 600 (70,000 carts, 300 GB/cart) – 21 PB

Number of cartridge slots

Starts at 1,448 customer-usable slots

70,000 customer-usable slots

Number of tape drives/types

Up to 64 drives of any combination of supported drives, including: T10000, Fibre Channel and FICON, T9840 ESCON, Fibre Channel and FICON, T9940 ESCON, Fibre Channel and FICON, LTO Fibre Channel, SDLT Fibre Channel, DLT-S4 Fibre Channel

Up to 448 drives of any combination of supported drives, including: T10000 Fibre Channel and FICON, T9840 ESCON, Fibre Channel and FICON, T9940 ESCON, Fibre Channel and FICON, LTO Fibre Channel, SDLT Fibre Channel, DLT-S4 Fibre Channel

Cartridge access port (CAP)

Standard 39-cartridge slot CAP, optional 39 additional slots (78 total)

Up to 546 cartridge slots

Availability

Non-disruptive serviceability

Standard N+1 power for drives, robotics and library electronics that can be replaced while the library is operating.

Mean exchanges/swaps between failure (MTBF/MSBF)

2,000,000 per HandBot

Compatibility

Supported host platforms

A wide variety, including SolarisTM, z/OS, AS/400, AIX, HPUX, Windows, Linux. Please check with your Sun account rep for your specific environment.

Robotics control interfaces

TCP/IP (IEEE 802.3, 100 baseT, half-duplex)

Any Cartridge Any Slot technology

Any supported cartridge type can be placed in any cell, no partitions or special drive or cartridge frames are required.

Management

Digital vision system

Unique digital vision camera system performs continuous calibration and reads bar codes.

Operator panel

Standard TCP/IP remote monitoring

Automatic clean

Additional dedicated cleaning cartridge slots are included for tape drive cleaning for multiple drive types by library or software command

Automatic self-discovery

Auto-discovery and auto-configuration for all drive, media types, slots, and CAP

Continuous automation calibration

No periodic maintenance or alignment required

Mechanical (Library)

SL8500 (minimum configuration)

SL8500 (max. configuration of 32 libraries)¹

Height

93.15 in (236.6 cm)

Depth

109 in (276.9 cm)

296.5 in (753.0 cm)

Width

67.3 in (170.81 cm)

2,338 in (5938.0 cm)

Weight (library only)

4,309 lb (1,954 kg)

247,830 lb (112,423 kg)

Environmental

Temperature (operating)

+60° to +90° F (+16° to +32° C)

Temperature (non-operating)

+40° to +90° F (+4° to +32° C)

Relative humidity (operating)

20% to 80%

Relative humidity (non-operating)

20% to 80%

Power

Voltage

Choice of 220–240 VAC @ 50–60 Hz single phase or three phase (Delta, Wye or SUVA) — optional redundant inputs of any of the above

Drives

Drive power consumption varies (refer to individual drive speciﬁcations)

Power consumption/dissipation

Varies by conﬁguration