Don't put a dime into these jukeboxes

At first blush, using a network-attached DVD-RAM jukebox sounds like an easy way to add hard disk storage. Each disc can hold 2.6G bytes of data, and like CD-RWs, they are rewritable media. Jukeboxes can hold hundreds of discs and make the contents available as a standard shared network drive. And because the discs are removable, you can easily create backups and off-site archival copies, or mail them to remote users in need of more data than can easily fit on a single CD-ROM (less than 1M byte).

However, these advantages are still mostly unrealized. The jukeboxes we examined were still immature, so much so that we didn't award a Blue Ribbon Award to the ones we tested. A big issue for the jukebox vendors is that they need to create better software tools to fix the inherent problems of using and managing Windows NT/SCSI devices.

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How we did it
The software side of DVD jukeboxes
Plasmon's AllStor NetReady server
Alphabet soup - A guide to the various disc formats
Interactive Scorecard and NetResults
Archive of Network World reviews
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Because prices of magnetic storage continue to plummet, you might wonder whether it's worth it to deal with these units. After all, 30G-byte hard drives cost as little as $100, while DVD-RAM discs cost about $15 each, or about twice as much per gigabyte. However, adding storage incrementally to a jukebox is relatively easy and doesn't require you to take apart your servers to add a new drive. Additionally, DVD-RAM jukebox management software handles the drive letter naming limitations, letting you name drives beyond the letter Z. The software allows an unlimited number of logical disk drives, with various schemes such as a logical drive per disc or spanning several discs. This makes sense for companies that have loads of multimedia presentations on their servers or want to maintain archival copies of streaming audio/video content, or have large collections of graphics files.

We tested three network-ready jukeboxes: the JVC MC-7100, Plasmon's D240-02DR and NSM's Satellite 2000, connecting each of them to a Windows NT network (See "How we did it," page 42). We invited Hewlett-Packard, Asaca, Axis and Pioneer, but they declined to participate. All three jukeboxes cost between $10,000 and $14,000 in a two-DVD drive configuration, and all three were lots of trouble to set up and get into operation. Our favorite was the JVC unit, but it was not good enough to earn a Blue Ribbon Award.

All these products are still immature. A good example is that although NT software is available for managing these devices, very little software is available for Windows 2000 server. All the products required a great bit of tinkering. Our advice? Find a good reseller who is familiar with one of these units and can get things working for you. Otherwise, you'll end up like we did, spending lots of time on the phone and e-mailing technical support personnel to get everything working.

Pieces of the puzzle

There are three pieces to setting up your own DVD-RAM networked jukebox. The first is the jukebox library unit itself. It contains one or more SCSI drives that play and record the DVDs, similar to the SCSI DVD players available for desktop computers. The library also houses shelves that hold 50, 100 or more DVD discs and a robotic arm that moves the discs from the shelves to the players. Finally, every jukebox contains a "mail slot," a tray that opens to the outside and is used to load a single piece of media and remove media from the inside of the jukebox.

The jukeboxes ranged in size from the NSM Satellite 2000 (about the size of a large PC-based server cabinet) to the Plasmon D240-02DR, about the size of a 5-cubic-foot refrigerator. The size of the units was more in line with their robotics and cabinet design, not their library capacity. Because you can only use one disc per drive, the more drives you install inside a jukebox the higher the initial purchase price, but the more capable the unit becomes for network usage. This is because multiple media can be written and read concurrently with multiple drives. We tested dual-drive models but would recommend you install the maximum number of drives if you intend to use these jukeboxes in any serious-sized network. The JVC can hold four drives, the NSM five and the Plasmon up to six drives. This capacity is different from the actual number of discs that can be held in each unit - the JVC can hold up to 100 discs, the NSM 135 and the Plasmon 240.

Some jukeboxes can contain players for other media, including CD-ROM and CD-R drives. The trick with these products is being able to make use of these multiple CD and DVD formats. This means they can share files stored on these CD formats, as well as burn their own CDs from your data. All DVD-RAM drives have the ability to read data from CD-R or CD-RW formats, with one caveat being the ability of the jukebox management software to enable this feature, and that is the second puzzle piece.

Software is where you'll spend most of your time because of NT, SCSI and DVD idiosyncrasies. Jukebox management software lets the data stored on DVDs and CDs be available to network users. Why is this software necessary? First off, because no jukebox comes bundled with its own management software yet. Second, the trouble with Windows NT is that it can't write data to DVDs directly, so it needs to be tricked into using this format as a legitimate network shared drive. The software caches information from the library to a magnetic disk for faster access and also is used to format the DVD optical discs. Finally, the software operates the robotics of the jukebox, taking inventory of the discs in the library and moving media around as it is needed to serve up files on your network.

Technically, a DVD-RAM drive can read files that are stored on CD-ROM, CD-R, CD-RW and various DVD formats, but you can't write to the recordable CDs - you need a CD-R drive for that. However, we found that getting this to work wasn't easy. Some software couldn't read anything but DVD formats, while others could read the other formats but needed some adjustments. We tried several software products on the three jukeboxes reviewed for this article but ultimately chose Point Jukebox Manager from Point Software and Systems.

The third piece of the puzzle is how to connect the jukebox to the network. There are two choices here. First is to use a specialized server appliance, such as the one we tested from Plasmon called NetReady.

The second choice is to connect the SCSI cables from the jukebox to a standard NT server, which supplies the network connection as well, and install the management software on that server. This takes more time to set up and will require you to have some knowledge of SCSI products and operations. Some jukeboxes can also use serial, rather than SCSI, connections, which reduces their overall performance but may be easier to set up. The Plasmon and JVC jukeboxes came with just SCSI connectors, while the NSM Satellite came with two connectors: a SCSI connector for the drives and a serial connection for the robotics controller.

Ease of use/setup

Each jukebox was difficult to set up, requiring at least one technical support call and sometimes more. Given the many puzzle pieces, we often had a hard time figuring out whether the problem was with our NT installation, the jukebox management software application, the SCSI configuration or the jukebox itself. Usually, the problem was with NT, but often the problem was poor documentation from the jukebox manufacturer. We recommend that if you intend to assemble your own system, install a clean copy of NT from scratch. One of the problems is that NT is very fussy about SCSI drivers and can get easily confused if multiple SCSI drivers are installed or if multiple applications claim the SCSI bus. Our technical support sessions often began with a technician telling us to open the Registry editor and examine various keys to make sure that the SCSI configuration was correct. That isn't a good state of affairs for these products and is indicative of the poor level of tools available.

Performance

Reading and writing files to a DVD-RAM disc is slower than a magnetic disk: We found it at best 20% slower, and often slower depending on what information was cached by the jukebox manager. The larger the cache on a magnetic disk and the greater the number of DVD drives on each unit, the better your own performance will be. The JVC was the best performer of the three. It was able to play MPEG movie files from multiple DVD discs for multiple users without any skips or audio dropouts.

Manageability and reliability

Another problem with jukeboxes is keeping track of your media and making sure that 2G bytes of files on one DVD disc doesn't disappear into the innards unaccounted for. That actually happened with each unit we tested but mainly because we inserted media with an incompatible format that the management software couldn't read. The NSM unit was the least reliable of the three, at one point requiring a cold reboot of both jukebox and NT server before it could continue to operate.

Documentation

All three units had horrible documentation. Part of the problem is that these are big units that come with a variety of protective packaging, and figuring out what you can remove and what you shouldn't is buried deep inside the manuals. A bigger problem was the range of operating environments where the jukeboxes will be used: NT, Unix, different SCSI adapters and different jukebox management software programs. The manuals did a poor job of addressing the specifics of setting up these devices under the different operating system environments. Of the three, JVC's was the best and NSM's the poorest.

Conclusion

Getting a network-attached DVD jukebox up and running isn't easy. Other than the NetReady appliance, there isn't any real way to attach these jukeboxes other than to a SCSI connector on a standard NT Server. This makes for some difficult times in terms of getting the right match among software, drivers and servers.

Of the three, the JVC was the best performer and had the most solidly made robotics, making it the most appropriate unit for network-attached storage. The NSM had trouble keeping up with more than a few users. The Plasmon unit had the highest capacity for discs and drives but lagged behind the JVC unit in terms of delivering data to multiple concurrent users.

Sharing DVD-RAM discs on the network is still a black art. Getting the various pieces put together will require patience, expertise in a variety of areas and lots of technical support calls. We recommend waiting until these products mature or until better software jukebox management tools are available before you invest in one of these units.

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