The Magstar 3590 Model E tape drive is bringing new capabilities to enterprise-class tape. The enhancements include an increased data rate, up from 9 MB/s to 14 MB/s. Building on IBMs successful Magstar 3590 technology base, the new Magstar 3590 E drive will write and read data onto 256 tracks, effectively doubling the data on current Magstar 3590 media. This advance protects the investment of thousands of Magstar 3590 customers who will be able to easily upgrade their current drives to the new model and continue to read their current 3590 cartridges

The new Magstar 3590 Model A60 control unit provides enhanced performance and connectivity as compared to the previous model. It offers two or four ESCON attachments, and up to twice the performance of the Magstar 3590 A50 control unit.

The Magstar 3494 Model HA1 High Availability unit increases library availability with a second library manager, a second accessor, and concurrent maintenance capabilities.

The Dual Active Accessor feature provides mount and inventory performance improvements by using both accessors concurrently in a 3494 which has the HA1 installed.

The updated release of this top-selling redbook includes these new models and capabilities and has been thoroughly revised to reflect the latest levels of software and hardware. This redbook is the indispensable companion for a successful implementation of IBM Magstar tape products in your environment because it is unique in its detailed coverage of this product.

It focuses on the practical steps of installing and implementing the IBM 3494 Tape Library on all supported platforms in a highly tape-centric computing environment and provides information about data migration and operation considerations for an IBM tape library environment. However, you will find that the OS/390 environment receives the most detailed coverage, in part because of the importance of this platform but also because of the complexity of this environment.