Bank Dumps Quantum Gear: Page 4 of 5

And though it was too late to catch Bank of America's eye, this week Quantum launched the "MAKO" PX720 tape library, which is designed to provide higher densities than the vendor's previous libraries. The PX720 can house up to 20 DLT or LTO drives and up to 732 slots in a single frame (see Quantum Launches High-End Library).

In any case, the investment bank has already shut off most of its Quantum equipment, except for one P1000 library, Mixer says. “We need to have some sort of DLT system online for legacy restores. We have to do that for compliance reasons until those tapes expire. We’re going to need to have one of these running for many years to come.”

And while Quantum's role at Bank of America appears to have fallen into Rick Moranis’s kid-shrinking machine, StorageTek seems to have been hit by the reverse blast of the apparatus, with potential contracts of gigantic proportions.

The investment side of the bank already has two StorageTek L700 libraries, each costing upward of $1 million, up and running in Chicago and Charlotte, Mixer says. [Bank of America's Waller says the "upward of $1 million" figure is "inaccurate," but she would not say how much the company is paying for the StorageTek libraries.] Another one, in New York, is not yet in production, he says. [Waller says the bank hasn't actually purchased the library for New York yet.]

StorageTek is not only providing the investment institution with libraries and tapes, but has also been pushing its information lifecycle management message hard (see StorageTek Looks to Bag Buzzword). It has been helping Bank of America identify large sets of data that don’t need to be backed up, to help lighten the data load being pushed through the company’s backup window.