On Thu, May 09, 2002 at 09:25:28PM +0100, Enda wrote:
> Has anybody else here seen Eircell;s ... now called vodaphone.... setup for
> storing this data? Real funny, its quite literally half a data centre
> dedicated to this wall to wall with shelves of tapes. They have full time
> staff of what are referred to internally as "tape monkeys" who go around
> pulling tapes into trolleys and loading them into the tape machines which
> are the size of builders roll on roll off skips. In fact when I was there
> they were replacing those machines with newer models that took up less floor
> space .... you've guessed it, so that they could install more shelf space
Haven't seen it but it sounds rather odd - there've been robotic libraries
for yonks - certainly well before Eircell started in life. I know ESA had
one which they used to manage the historical data from the Meteosat
meteorological satellites. Of course there is another possibility - I'm
quite sure said changers were not inexpensive (ESA was never shy about
spending the taxpayers' money, bless 'em :-) ) and Eircom begat Eircell and
Eircom was overstaffed, so it may well have made much more financial sense
to turn a redundant clerk of some sort into a tape monkey.
Niall
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