Optical Jukebox They're fast. They're cheap. They're reliable. They let you get fast access to an enormous amount of stuff. For even more reasons to buy an optical jukebox, read on.
Here's what's new with that good old storage standby, the 5 1/4" optical jukebox:
Two-arm robotics. The latest innovation in 5 1/4"optical jukebox robotics is to put two arms in a juke instead of one. Two arms should halve the retrieval time. DISC (Milpitas, CA 408-934-7000) was the first company to make a two-arm 5 1/4"optical jukebox. It put the pair of arms in its giant 1,000-slot jukebox.
Each arm handles its own 500-disc array. That's like having two jukeboxes in one box. It takes less space than two separate jukeboxes. It's only 25% bigger than DISC's 500-slot jukebox, yet it has twice the capacity. Also, the bigger the jukebox the cheaper the cost per slot.
The first mid-size jukebox to have two robotic arms comes from Adaptive Info-systems (Mission Viejo, CA 714-587-9077), Hitachi's optical jukebox subsidiary. Adaptive previewed its two-arm OL500 and OL502 jukeboxes at Comdex and officially announced them at AIIM. They will ship in the third quarter, after jukebox management software makers have rewritten their programs to take advantage of the extra arm.
Both arms have free range over the entire jukebox. Each jukebox can hold up to 270 cartridges -- that's 682 gigabytes of storage. Each can house two to eight drives. Why don't the two arms crash into each other? The software that runs the robotics prevents collisions. As requests for information come in, the jukebox management software sorts them. Typically the software looks for queries for data in cartridges already in the drives and handles them first. Then algorithms are used to make sure that as each arm does its job the pathways of the two don't clash.
All other manufacturers' jukebox robotics are "single picker" or "dual picker." A single picker is like a human arm -- it has one hand at the end of it. A dual picker is like an arm with two hands at the end. A single picker mechanism has to go to the drive, take out the cartridge already in there, return the cartridge to its spot, go to the new cartridge's slot, pick up the new cartridge, and go back to the drive to insert it. A dual picker picks up the old cartridge and replaces it with the new during the same trip. Some manufacturers say their single pickers are faster than dual pickers because they're lighter.
LIM-DOW drives. Light Intensity Modulation Direct Overwrite technology speeds up the process of writing MO discs. Special discs with one memory layer instead of two require only one pass to write instead of two. This is great if you're writing files to discs. The discs cost more than regular MO discs. Plasmon's LIM-DOW discs hold 2.6 gigs and are $100 apiece.
When you use a jukebox, you're usually not writing files to discs. You're accessing files that have already been put on discs.
The jury is out on how much you need LIM-DOW drives in optical jukeboxes today. "We don't see a lot of value to LIM-DOW at 2.6 gigs," says Peter Way, product manager at Hewlett-Packard. HP doesn't have LIM-DOW products yet.
"LIM-DOW speeds up writes but not reads," he points out. "Most jukes write once and read lots of times. LIM-DOW will probably be helpful when we get to 8X capacity. By then it will have been proven more and it will be put together with a dramatic capacity increase. Manufacturers could package the new features together for customers rather than make them switch a little at a time. It creates confusion for customers when you trickle in new innovations."
Backward and forward compatibility. Most 5 1/4"optical discs live by industry format and capacity standards that change every two years. They were all 1.3 gigabyte (also called 2X) discs two years ago. They're 2.6 gig (4X) today. They'll be 5.2 gigs (8X) next year, and 10 gigs a year or two after that. When you want to start using 10-gig discs, will your jukebox be able to read those as well as your old 1.3 gigabyte discs?
A streamlined mechanism. Some people warn you to stay away from jukeboxes with a lot of belts. Belts tend to snap and break. Hewlett-Packard and Plasmon, for example, use screws instead of belts.
Other manufacturers point out that gears also wear out and they take longer to replace. Solid steel construction is a good thing. Some jukeboxes contain a lot of plastic, which wears out faster than metal.
The fewer moving parts the better.
Packaging. If the jukebox isn't packed and shipped with care, it may be dead on arrival. It's up to the manufacturer to replace it, but you waste time waiting for the new one. If you've got an engineer coming in from out of town to install the jukebox, he or she has got to reschedule.
If it's a big jukebox, make sure it's resting on a strong pallet and the packaging is sturdy and strong.
Maintenance and support. Can the manufacturer fix your problem immediately if you need it? Do they offer 24/7 phone support?
Scalability. How much storage can you add to the jukebox as your storage needs increase? How easy is it to increase the system's capacity?
Disc-to-drive ratio. A small disc-to-drive ratio can make your jukebox work faster. The more drives you have, the more likely the disc you want is already in a drive -- and instantly accessible (this is also called "data under the head").
"It's well worth an extra $4,000 to go from two drives to four," says Arsenio Batoy, vice-president at distributor Optical Laser (Huntington Beach, CA 714-903-1200). "That can cut your time from 55 seconds to 29 to wait for a customer statement to come up. Compound that every day for a year and you get a 30-40% increase in productivity."
In a large jukebox with 100 or more discs, this ratio becomes less relevant. The multiple drives are still being served by only one or two robotic arms.
The drives still have to wait for swaps to take place. The best way to explain this is with an example. Say McDonald's had six people at the counter in their store and just one person in the kitchen.
The six cashiers might be very efficient, but they'd stand around waiting for the hamburgers to cook. The customer might not get his meal any faster than if there were two people at the counter. Unless they all wanted food that had been cooked and was sitting in the shutes ready to go.
This is what the major manufacturers have to offer today:
Hitachi subsidiary Adaptive Infosystems (Mission Viejo, CA 714-587-9077) makes the two-arm OL500 and OL502. These jukes hold two to eight drives and up to 264 cartridges. They use Hitachi drives in a Hitachi juke. Jeffrey Kutter, national sales manager, says the advantage to this is that the two pieces of hardware talk to each other well. This jukebox also lets you hot-replace the drives. The mean time between failure is two million insertions.
Another line of 5 1/4"optical jukes Adaptive offers is the AdaptStor A6970 series. These are turnkey systems. With a 5 1/4"optical jukebox, Adaptive provides its hierarchical storage management software and an AdaptStor 6500 Series RAID subsystem. The company installs the product and maintains it throughout its life.
The jukebox itself stores up to 501 gigabytes of data on as many as 192 platters. The drive-to-platter access time is less than 2.9 seconds and its mean swaps between failure is 600,000 cycles.
The entire system starts at $46,300 for a 156 gigabyte optical jukebox, a five gigabyte RAID with a four megabyte cache and Windows NT HSM software. Adaptive offers 7/24 technical support and same-day response to physical problems.
DISC makes the mother of all optical jukeboxes, the DocuStore 6x9 SlimLine. It has 1,054 media slots and 16 drive slots. It has two pickers and a disc swap time of just 3.5 seconds.
DISC also sells a range of jukes from 50 slots to 1,000 slots ranging in price from $16,000 to $150,000. The D50 and D60 hold 50 and 60 discs respectively. They offer a four-second disc exchange time.
DISC lets you use multiple SCSI buses in their jukes. If your jukebox services a lot of requests for big files, the bandwidth of one SCSI bus may be insufficient. Using several SCSI buses lets you keep your data transfer rates up even when you have high volumes.
Another plus to these jukeboxes is that many of them are field upgradable. The D150 is upgradable from 150 discs to 250 discs. Another model, the D244, lets you grow from 250 to 400 discs. The D280 series is upgradable to 500 pieces of media.
The mean swaps between failure for DISC jukes is two million. They use positive air pressure which creates a dust-free environment. They pull in external air, filter it twice and blow it up through the middle of the jukebox.
The German company Grundig's jukeboxes are sold in the US by Revelation Products (Valley Forge, PA 610-933-5875).
Grundig makes two medium size jukes, both SCSI-II devices. The $13,000 GMS 2040 holds 40 MO cartridges and up to four drives. The $22,000 2080 holds 80 MO cartridges and up to six drives. The minimum swap time slot to drive for both jukeboxes is five seconds.
They use a single picker mechanism that's bitravel -- it travels vertically and horizontally across the slots.
Hewlett-Packard (Cupertino, CA 408-725-8900) has more than 60% of the market share for 5 1/4"optical jukeboxes. They all have dual pickers. The larger ones have on-line drive repair. That means you can fix the drives while they're still running.
HP juke robotics have a cable lift system with few moving parts. This makes the parts less breakable. They have a two million MSBF.
The company's SureStore 5 1/4" optical jukes work with WORM and rewritable discs. They range in capacity from 40 gigabytes to 618 gigs. They hold one to 12 drives. Prices range from $7,000 to $94,000. The 40fx holds up to 16 discs and one or two drives.
The 80fx holds 32 discs and two drives. The 160fx has 64 discs and four drives. The 200fx has 76 discs and two drives. The 330fx holds 128 discs and four or six drives. The 600fx has 238 discs and six to 12 drives.
IBM's Storage Systems Division's (San Jose, CA 408-256-1600) 3995 C series has 22 models of 5 1/4"optical jukeboxes. They span capacities from 52 gigabytes to 671 gigs except for the MVS version which can hold 1.34 terabytes in one subsystem. The mechanism is built by Plasmon.
Some of the models work as SCSI-II attached systems to any personal computer or RISC 6000. Others are designed specifically to work with AS/400, MVS or S/390 computers or LANs.
These jukes come with library management software, IBM's optical file system, communications software, drivers and diagnostics software.
All IBM jukeboxes support the three types of 5 1/4" optical storage -- permanent WORM, CCW WORM (the software simulation of WORM) and rewritable MO. They use racks and pinions to minimize the use of belts, which tend to wear out. They have closed loop air circulation. That means they don't bring in outside air, which might be contaminated.
Maxoptix's (Fremont, CA 510-353-9700) latest jukebox, the $6,000 MX520, is a 20-platter, 52-gigabyte juke with one or two drives. Its mean swaps between failure is 750,000 cycles. The company's five other jukes have 40-258 slots and 104-670 gigabytes of storage. They make their own mechanisms.
Micro Design International recently debuted the first LIM-DOW jukebox, the SE2600SM. This 20-cartridge (52 gig) two-drive jukebox costs $11,000. It's the latest addition to MDI's SCSI Express series. The name SCSI Express comes from the MDI networking software these jukeboxes come with. It lets you treat the jukebox like a hard drive and write files directly to it.
Other 5 1/4" optical jukeboxes in the MDI family range in capacity from 41 gigs to 618 gigs. They all come with onsite next-day repair service for one year. They're based on Hewlett-Packard mechanisms.
Pinnacle Micro (Irvine, CA 714-789-3000) took the daring (some call it foolish) step of offering nonstandard 4.6 gigabyte MO drives and jukeboxes.
They're the only company offering this format. This equipment gives you almost twice the capacity of 2.6 gig jukeboxes, ranging from 75 gigs to 4.5 terabytes.
They provide more data under the head than 2.6 gig format jukes. They support CCW and WORM. They cost little more than 2.6 gig jukes.
Plasmon (Eden Prairie, MN 612-946-4100) began shipping its first LIM-DOW
5 1/4" optical drives and jukeboxes in February. Their M-Series jukeboxes come in a LIM-DOW version. These jukeboxes have two to six DW260 MO drives with a 4 MB buffer and a 2-4 MB per second data transfer rate.
The jukeboxes range from the $7,000 52-gigabyte M20J-260 to the $54,000 670-gig (with six drives) M258J-260. Again, the LIM-DOW feature should make these jukes faster when you need to transfer large files into the jukebox.
Their MSBF is 800,000. Plasmon also makes the mechanisms that IBM uses in their jukeboxes.
Sony's Storage Products Division's (San Jose, CA 408-432-0190) newest model 5 1/4" optical jukebox is the $8,000 OSL2500. It holds five more discs than its predecessor, the OSL2001, did, for a total of 25 discs. It has a simplified four-line alphanumeric display. It has a disc exchange time of less than four seconds. Its drives are LIM-DOW and ablative WORM.
The company's $18,000 OSL-6000 holds 60 platters for 156 gigabytes of storage.
Les Inanchy, marketing manager for magneto optical, says Sony's jukeboxes use single-picker robotic arms for simplicity and speed.
"MO discs are heavy," he says. "In dual-picker mechanisms, they're transporting two discs at the same time and that adds to the mass of the picker and slows the mechanism down." He says Sony's single-picker arm gets discs during the time that the drive is spinning up.
These jukes also come with drives that have motorized eject. "That works in favor of the longevity of the drive," Inanchy says. "Before, discs were slammed in by spring-loading. That's more wear and tear on the drive. The drive is usually the weakest link in a jukebox. It will typically wear out before the robotics do."
Terastore (San Jose, CA 408-324-2110) doesn't make any 5 1/4"optical jukeboxes yet. But they've announced a technology that has won respect throughout the industry and could set the standard for future generations of optical jukeboxes. They plan to ship their first products in early 1998.
Their "near-field recording" technology stores more than 40 gigabytes per 5 1/4" disc. It marries concepts of flying-head hard-drive recording (they call it Winchester) and optical recording.
"We put optical lenses on the tiny magnetic head and those lenses are used to focus the laser beam," says Skip Kilsdonk, marketing manager. "You're actually reading and writing on a disc similar to the way you do on a hard disk.
"We focus the laser spot on a tiny point, heat it to the Curie point and change the phase angle so when light is reflected it can be deduced as 1 or 0. By using a Winchester flying head we eliminate the complex parts in an MO drive." They put the recording layer on their discs close to the surface. They put the laser really close (less than one wavelength of the laser) to the disc. This intimacy lets the technology record billions of bits per square inch. That is what lets you put 40 gigabytes on a 5 1/4"disc.
In the head itself is a tiny magnetic coil. That's used to switch the orientation of the magnetic spots on the disc. Then you have direct overwrite. The magnetic recording layer is protected with an overcoat. These discs are also sealed in cartridges.
Like Pinnacle Micro, Tera-store will have to deal with the issue of offering a nonstandard format. They're confident they will overcome it. "We'll make sure there are multiple suppliers of both media and disc drives," Kilsdonk says. We'll license this technology to others. If we were to try to get standards approved it would take us at least five years. We think this will define a new standard. We're working with Microsoft, Imation (a media maker) and other companies that will supply parts of this technology."
They have to design the disc drive from scratch because the technology is so new.
Phil Devin, vice-president and principal analyst at DataQuest (San Jose, CA 408-468-8211) gives Terastore's effort a cautious thumbs-up. "We've seen it reading and writing," he says. "The technology is real. The people involved are some of the most credible people in the world.
"It's still not a slam dunk to be able to get such incredible increases in storage densities without some level of heartbreak. It still has to be proven that they can manufacture it. But I have the utmost confidence in the people involved. It's probable they'll have something out soon."
Terastore has one promising technology. Also coming down the mass storage pike are MO7 and DVD-RW.
MO7 is a CD-like 120mm format. Each disc will hold seven gigabytes of information, hence the name. It will use MO recording techniques. The drives should be backward-compatible with CD-ROM and DVD-ROM. The specs should be out this year, drives in late 1998.
