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Product reliability
The bellwether question of our survey--"Patches can be applied nondisruptively"--normally sees a dip in scores, and this survey followed the trend. Nevertheless, Spectra Logic had an unusually high 5.69 score to this statement among midrange libraries. HP was tops among enterprise products with a 5.28, while Sun was second with a 5.19. Spectra Logic's high score, however, was offset by a 5.08 for "This product's error handling is easy and intuitive;" HP also received a low 4.89 for this statement.
"Things like firmware and stuff like that, you can go to the Web site," says Conservation International's Littlefield of his HP StorageWorks MSL library. "It detects what type of device you have and firmware for that device is downloaded," he says. "You can do regular maintenance and firmware upgrades very smoothly."
Neither HP nor Spectra Logic were tops in this category. Those honors went to Sun (enterprise) and IBM (midrange) with identical 5.57 scores (see the "Product reliability" graphs within "Rankings of enterprise tape libraries" and "Rankings of midrange tape libraries"). Sun's enterprise libraries received the highest rating for "This product requires very few unplanned patches" (5.94). It also had a 5.81 for "This product meets my service-level requirements."
IBM's midrange systems topped this category on the strength of a 6.04 for "This product requires very few unplanned patches." IBM users also rewarded the company with a 5.92 for "This product meets my service-level requirements." Consistent with other products, IBM's lowest rating in this section was a 5.04 for "This product's error handling is easy and intuitive."
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