[Shu-cdromlan] Re: Experiences with Axis StorPoint?

[Yael Golan]

Jonathan,

At the University of Haifa Library we use one
AXIS StorPoint CD server and one NAS server.

On the StorPoint CD we have two DVD drives and
a 32GB magnetic disc for caching.
The caching process is fast (a few minutes
for a full CD).
However, the upper cached voulume size limit is
4GB, and if you have more on a DVD you can't
cache it, and have to use it from the DVD drive.

The NAS server was not designed for CD caching
purposes, and does not even allow having a CD
drive on it - you have to copy the stuff from
your workstation's CD drive, and caching takes much
longer than on the StorPoint CD. It can emulate a
Netware server by "parasitically" utilising the
user info on a real Netware server, but does not
require similar amounts of memory per storage space.

I found that, for some reason, running is faster
from the NAS than from the StorPoint CD (though our
NAS has only 32MB RAM as compared to 96MB on our
StorPoint CD. We actually bought more memory for
the NAS, but have a mysterious problem - the AXIS
representatives did not manage to install
the additional memory on our NAS...)

It would be nice, of course, if the advantages
of the two server types could be combined.
We heard from AXIS representatives that
a combination is in planning, but apparently
there is nothing to show for it yet...


Yael Golan
Reference - Online Services
Library
University of Haifa
31905 Haifa, Israel

Voice: 972-4-8249037
Fax: 972-4-8249043