I have tried for a long time to get StorageTek to give me an offer for upgrading 9940A drives to 9940B but without any result.

Has anyone received an offer for upgrading?

/johnny

What country are you in?

Denmark, and I have contact with my account manager at StorageTek.
But it seems to me that someone in StorageTek doesn't give him the info he need to make the final offer.

/johnny

Contact Stig Ryaa at STK Denmark, he should know exactly who you need to contact to get this problem solved.

Thanks Schotte.

I know the price I got from my account manager and it was a joke. For that price I could migrate to more then 2 times the numbers of 9940 and still have money left.

I wanted to ask if someone have got some offers from StorageTek they could use.

I talk with my accountmanager 2 times a week, so it's not contact from StorageTek I am looking for. I have a great account manager.

/johnny

Sorry that I can´t help any further than that....!

I have the prices now. Almost fell to the floor.

I expected an offer for an upgrade but I basicly just got the prices for new drives and could then sell my old drives to what the market would pay.

I am not so happy about this.

They tell me that they can't upgrade the drives. It can be that from a technical point they can't, but most research for the new drives I have already payed for when I got the old ones.

I just hope we get some better prices and that I can find the money. I would not like to be forced to move to LTO.

/johnny

Are you still requiring the 9940 drives?
What are your options?
Can you add additional 9940A? if so how many will you require, or, do you need to change to the 9940B? If so, how many do you require?

We upgraded already to 9940B.
We swapped totaly from 9940A to 9940B. It was easy and painless.
The new drives work even better then the old ones.

Our need to change was mostly that we needed more capacity in our L180 and it cost us almost the same to upgrade from 9940A to 9940B as it would have cost us to get more slots in the L180 and buy more tapes.

And yes we use 9940B's in a L180 even if the spec sheet says you need a L700 (we don't have the floor space for that)

/johnny

If oyu should run into more questions on StorageTek tape libraries please contact mikej@harwood-intl.com.  His company can be a big help when looking at storage options.  (Stk, LSI Logic, EMC)

I don't req. the 9940B drives any more since I have upgrade my 9940A's to 9940B's. To be correct it was a "fork lift" upgrade.

You can mix 9940A's and 9940B's in that respect that you can have them in two different storagegroups (like you could mix DLT and LTO)
The big difference is that you can restore 9940A tapes using a 9940B drive. But you also have to remember that a 9940B drive can't write data to a 9940A tape (except at BOT that would change the tape to a 9940B tape)

I expect to buy a extra 9940B in the next 3-4 months from StorageTek if I can get a good price (it normaly takes some time and a "broken arm" on the sales rep.)