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  • 1.  Storage Archive LE

    Posted 27 days ago

    Need some help.

    Does anyone of you guys know if it is possible to test the Storage Archive LE product on a ibm site which we can remotely connect to ?

    Without the real physical hw (library) ,which we don't have, it doesn't make sense.

    So please if anyone is aware of a  test environment it would be helpfull for us.

    thanks all



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    Rudolf van Laar
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  • 2.  RE: Storage Archive LE

    Posted 21 days ago

    Hi Rudolf,

    good news, what you are asking for actually exists, and in two official flavors.

    The first one is hiding in plain sight on the IBM Storage Archive resources page: there is a guided hands-on lab called "Getting Started with IBM Storage Archive Enterprise Edition", where you access an IBM-hosted lab environment, verify the configuration and run migrations and recalls of files between IBM Storage Scale and tape. You book it from here (look for the "Book a demo" entry under Getting Started):
    https://www.ibm.com/products/storage-archive/resources
    One honest note: the lab is built around the EE flavor, not plain LE. That said, EE embeds an enhanced version of LE as its tape movement component (IBM states it explicitly in the EE introduction: https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/storage-archive-ee/1.3.5?topic=overview-introduction-storage-archive-enterprise-edition), so the LTFS and library mechanics you would be touching are the same family. If your goal is to understand how the product behaves against a real library without owning one, this is the fastest route.

    The second route is IBM Technology Zone. There is a Storage Live Demos collection with reservation-based environments, physically hosted in the IBM Client Engineering data center in Montpellier, that you reach remotely (Business Partners connect through OpenVPN, the how-to is documented):
    https://techzone.ibm.com/collection/storage-live-demos-collection
    Access instructions and support: https://www.ibm.com/support/pages/techzone-support-level-1-ibm-storage-demos
    The caveat here is that TechZone is for IBMers and Business Partners. If you are an end client, the way in is simply through your IBM rep or a partner: any IBM Storage BP can book the environment and run the session together with you, which is honestly how most of these evaluations happen anyway.

    And since you mentioned having no physical library at all: if what you need is only functional familiarization with the LE command line and workflows, some people in the community experiment with software tape library emulators (mhVTL is the usual suspect) that present emulated IBM drives and changers to the OS. I have not validated that against current Storage Archive LE myself, it is completely unsupported, and the LE code does check for supported hardware, so treat it strictly as a lab toy if you go down that path, never as a validation environment.

    If you tell us whether you are on the partner or the end-client side, and what you actually need to test (pure LTFS behavior, library management, or an EE-style archive tier), I can point you more precisely.

    Regards

    Roberto



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    Roberto Renna
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