Short story: I'm looking for opinions on the current tape drive
options for backups in the 400Gb -> 2Tb range. The new LTO-3 and
SDLTII cartridges hold 800Gb and 600Gb compressed, respectively.
A single drive of either would probably satisfy our backup needs for
another 2, maybe 3 years. By that time the tape capacity would likely
have doubled again and we would buy another drive. Or there are
tape libraries available for both formats and those would satisfy
the capacity needs longer, albeit at the cost of multivolume
backups. What do you folks suggest? Please comment upon reliability,
cost, and/or performance. Any other tape format we should consider?

Long story:
We've just outgrown the single SDLT320 drive that has been used to
backup a Solaris system I manage. This format/drive, and another
we have on a different machine, have been ultra-reliable, with no
drive failures and only one bad (from day 1) cartridge. No cartridge
that worked the first time has failed subsequently. This Solaris
machine is used primarily to run an Oracle database but we
don't have very stringent uptime requirements. We also want to
be really sure that we can get back on line again following a
restore. So backups have consisted of shutting down the
database, ufsdump of the various partitions and volumes, and
then start everything up again. We rotate the tapes through
an offsite storage location. The last adjustment of the
Oracle storage put that data alone over 380Gb. It took 3 years for
the database to grow to that size, and us to outgrow the SDLT320
drive. I'd rather not do manual multi-cartridge backups on this
system, mostly because I don't want to have to come in at 4:00AM
to feed cartridges into the drive, or to shut down during a
workday to do backups.

Thanks,

David Mathog
readme backwards sortof: ude DOT hcetlac AT gohtam

In article , David Mathog writes:
>Short story: I'm looking for opinions on the current tape drive
>options for backups in the 400Gb -> 2Tb range. The new LTO-3 and
>SDLTII cartridges hold 800Gb and 600Gb compressed, respectively.
>A single drive of either would probably satisfy our backup needs for
>another 2, maybe 3 years. By that time the tape capacity would likely
>have doubled again and we would buy another drive. Or there are
>tape libraries available for both formats and those would satisfy
>the capacity needs longer, albeit at the cost of multivolume
>backups. What do you folks suggest? Please comment upon reliability,
>cost, and/or performance. Any other tape format we should consider?

We decided for LTO3 (MSL6000 Series) with MRU and VMS (previously SLS too)

Have you already seen
http://www.openvms.digital.com/openv...pe_matrix.html

--
Peter "EPLAN" LANGSTOEGER
Network and OpenVMS system specialist
E-mail peter@langstoeger.at
A-1030 VIENNA AUSTRIA I'm not a pessimist, I'm a realist

We just shipped 4 x Quantum LTO3 400/800GB rackmounted to a customer. (VMS
Customer too!)
They are very very quick and were no problem installation and backup-wise

DT

--

David B Turner
Island Computers US Corp
2700 Gregory St, Suite 180
Savannah GA 31404
Tel: 912 447 6622 X201
Cell: 912 447 6622 X251
Fax: 912 201 0402
Email: dbturner@icusc.com
Web: http://www.islandco.com
=====================================
All orders are subject to the following terms and conditions
of sale. These should be read before ordering.
http://www.islandco.com/warranty.html

"David Mathog" wrote in message
news:e6pe1p$5br$1@naig.caltech.edu...
> Short story: I'm looking for opinions on the current tape drive
> options for backups in the 400Gb -> 2Tb range. The new LTO-3 and
> SDLTII cartridges hold 800Gb and 600Gb compressed, respectively.
> A single drive of either would probably satisfy our backup needs for
> another 2, maybe 3 years. By that time the tape capacity would likely
> have doubled again and we would buy another drive. Or there are
> tape libraries available for both formats and those would satisfy
> the capacity needs longer, albeit at the cost of multivolume
> backups. What do you folks suggest? Please comment upon reliability,
> cost, and/or performance. Any other tape format we should consider?
>
> Long story:
> We've just outgrown the single SDLT320 drive that has been used to
> backup a Solaris system I manage. This format/drive, and another
> we have on a different machine, have been ultra-reliable, with no
> drive failures and only one bad (from day 1) cartridge. No cartridge
> that worked the first time has failed subsequently. This Solaris
> machine is used primarily to run an Oracle database but we
> don't have very stringent uptime requirements. We also want to
> be really sure that we can get back on line again following a
> restore. So backups have consisted of shutting down the
> database, ufsdump of the various partitions and volumes, and
> then start everything up again. We rotate the tapes through
> an offsite storage location. The last adjustment of the
> Oracle storage put that data alone over 380Gb. It took 3 years for
> the database to grow to that size, and us to outgrow the SDLT320
> drive. I'd rather not do manual multi-cartridge backups on this
> system, mostly because I don't want to have to come in at 4:00AM
> to feed cartridges into the drive, or to shut down during a
> workday to do backups.
>
> Thanks,
>
> David Mathog
> readme backwards sortof: ude DOT hcetlac AT gohtam

David Mathog wrote:
> Short story: I'm looking for opinions on the current tape drive
> options for backups in the 400Gb -> 2Tb range. The new LTO-3 and
> SDLTII cartridges hold 800Gb and 600Gb compressed, respectively.

[big snippage]
I'd rather not do manual multi-cartridge backups on this
> system, mostly because I don't want to have to come in at 4:00AM
> to feed cartridges into the drive, or to shut down during a
> workday to do backups.

If you can afford it the best way to do backups is to have a backup
server with adequate disk storage. The Production servers back up
overnight to the backup server. Gigabit ether and fsnap are good hints
here. You now have a fast restore method without fiddling with tapes if
something breaks. The backup server can now be backed up to tape during
working hours.

A neat trick is to also set up the backup server as an install server
with some extra post-install scripts to restore the entire system from
scratch in the event of serious failure. This is VERY usefull in a data
centre situation with many servers and a small number of spare machines
reserved for failure recovery.

"David Mathog" wrote in message
news:e6pe1p$5br$1@naig.caltech.edu...
> Short story: I'm looking for opinions on the current tape drive
> options for backups in the 400Gb -> 2Tb range. The new LTO-3 and
> SDLTII cartridges hold 800Gb and 600Gb compressed, respectively.
> A single drive of either would probably satisfy our backup needs for
> another 2, maybe 3 years. By that time the tape capacity would likely
> have doubled again and we would buy another drive. Or there are
> tape libraries available for both formats and those would satisfy
> the capacity needs longer, albeit at the cost of multivolume
> backups. What do you folks suggest? Please comment upon reliability,
> cost, and/or performance. Any other tape format we should consider?

Hello David,

We have been using a pair of SDLT600 tape drives for nearly 2 years
without any problems except for 2 cartridges that were initially
defective (we have not had any cartridges go bad over time).
You may want to go to the next generation and get a DLT-S4 tape
drive (800 GB native, 1.6 GB compressed) for $4000:

http://www.pcnation.com/web/details.asp?item=J40768

Daniel Lang