Mid-Size Business Tape Library Suggestions? 98
MPankau asks: "My current company is quickly outgrowing our current tape library and I'm looking for some advice on where to start looking. We backup approximately 12TB of data per night with about 3TB of that going to a disk backup on an EMC Clarion CX600. We're primarily looking for something that will give us some room for growth and be cost effective. What tape formats and library solutions would Slashdot readers recommend? Also, are there any other data backup solutions out there that may be better than tape?"
AIT (Score:1, Offtopic)
Re:AIT (Score:2)
Major funding for this message was brought to you by Sony.
Re:AIT (Score:5, Informative)
P.S. I also usually passionately dislike Sony.
Re:AIT (Score:2)
Supposedly AIT5's are due out later this year. I think they are supposed to hold 500GB uncompressed.
Re:AIT (Score:1)
No kidding.
We use LTO2 and are looking at LTO3. It's an open standard, unlike the GP's Sony adver^Wsuggestion.
Re:AIT (Score:3, Interesting)
You are tied to Sony drives, and since the form factor is not even close to LTO, DLT or 3590/3592, your selection of libraries is also limited.
SirWired
LTO and StorageTEK SL-500 (Score:4, Interesting)
LTO3 is the way to go: 400 GB native 800 GB compressed.
http://www.lto-technology.com/ [lto-technology.com]
Look at the StorageTEK SL-500. The library is modular and can be expanded (up to 500 slots and 15 drives) as you requirements dictate.
http://www.storagetek.com/products/product_page22
I run our company HQ on 5 LTO2 drives in 142 slot library. Weekly full backups about 5 TB. Daily incremental backups take another 3-4 TB per week.
Re:LTO and StorageTEK SL-500 (Score:2)
We also have 2 media servers in Atlanta and Bangalore running AIT3 on Windows 2003 Standard also gigabit connected. Backups through these media servers are much, much slower than the LTO2 backups.
Re:LTO and StorageTEK SL-500 (Score:1)
Also, avoid quantum libraries like the plague. We've had constant problem with all of our quantum libraries, abo
Re:LTO and StorageTEK SL-500 (Score:2)
Does anybody have information on the performance of IBM drives?
Call EMC back, write another check (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Call EMC back, write another check (Score:2, Insightful)
Or they're just too cheap to do it, and turn to slashdot for a quick fix that will probably not do it.
Re:Call EMC back, write another check (Score:2)
Re:Call EMC back, write another check (Score:1)
He's asking about the hardware side, not the software.
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:You want this (Score:3, Interesting)
Where else does someone being helpful offer to sell you an unused something they paid $1.2 million for?
Re:You want this (Score:1, Funny)
Re:You want this (Score:1)
I'm surprised he even mentioned a device. I was expecting a bunch of "Go to Google you nitwit" replies.
Re:You want this (Score:1)
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(thats what, a 30 year old MAD reference?)
Re:You want this (Score:1)
Re:You want this (Score:2, Funny)
Re:You want this (Score:2)
Re:You want this (Score:2)
Tape Backups (Score:1)
Depends on what you want to do (Score:5, Informative)
BUT IF you want weekly, monthly, quarterly, yearly backups then a virtual tape library (VTL) is a better option. For most servers, the change in the dataset is small and gradual so a VTL stores one full compressed back + diffs for incremental/differential/full backups. Also, VTLs look for redundant data across servers; 10 similar linux servers will have the almost identical binaries.
I am currently looking at http://www.datadomain.com/ [datadomain.com] VTL to replace a 72 slot dual drive LTO 1st gen library.
A VTL costs a bit less than a regular tape library + all the tapes you need but the increased throughput and no more tape handling is what makes it worth it.
0.02cents.
Re:Depends on what you want to do (Score:4, Informative)
It's hard for a small business to keep offsites with a VTL. For a big business with a dedicated circuit to a remote datacenter, it's just fine, but most companies can't afford that. He'll still need a tape solution. It would certainly be faster and cheaper to use the VTL for nightlies and only produce a single set of tapes per week though. It may even make a cheaper tape solution more tolerable.
If he doesn't care to continue using a legacy backup software package, then a VTL is useless, because there is no need to maintain the tape paradigm and the virtualization layer, and he could start using snapshoting instead.
Re:Depends on what you want to do (Score:2)
Depending on requirements, broadband link is all that is needed.
More bandwidth can be had with point to point microwave links (300km limit).
Re:Depends on what you want to do (Score:2)
That would not be a very high requirement. A broadband link is quite a reduction from the 12MB/s that I see on tape libraries. With good outbound DSL, you might be lucky to get 512kbps, but less than half that is more likely.
More bandwidth can be had with point to point microwave links (300km limit).
How much does that cost? That doesn't sound cheap.
Re:Depends on what you want to do (Score:2)
VTLs are only interesting for interfacing with legacy software.
Re:Depends on what you want to do (Score:2)
In your scenario, this could eliminate the need to
Re:Depends on what you want to do (Score:2)
Perhaps. EMC has some low-cost high density stuff used by the finance industry a lot, but I'd still look into MAID disk arrays (massive arrays of inactive disks). They have better response than tapes and don't chew anywhere near the power of a large RAID array; disks with info not being used don't spin except for an algorithm-based spin-up exerciser. Iirc they also use acoustic sensors and other interesting bits to pro-actively determine a failing disk, w
I would pick LTO (Score:2)
Re:I would pick LTO (Score:2)
The best solution (Score:1)
Re:The best solution (Score:2)
Professor Wernstrom at a Robot Convention, Futurama, 3004, AD
Do you really need TAPES? (Score:1)
Re:Do you really need TAPES? (Score:4, Informative)
The shelf life may be longer on hard drives, but the chance of the tape surviving the move to the offsite storage facility is way higher. The infrastructure for connecting a large number of hard drives (switch ports, backplanes, caddys, etc...) ends up costing more than the drive (BTW, 400GB drives cost between five and ten times more than an LTO2 tape), and the automation just doesn't exist (changer robots, barcoding, etc...).
Virtual tape is great, but it's not archival, and it's not offsite. If you're not already tied to tape and tape software, there is no point in using those solutions when you could do snapshotting or CDP instead.
How about UDO? (Score:2)
The shelf life may be longer on hard drives, but the chance of the tape surviving the move to the offsite storage facility is way higher.
You might find UDO [plasmon.com] discs better than both.
Re:Do you really need TAPES? (Score:1)
Re:Do you really need TAPES? (Score:2)
And 35 GB is 'a little low'? That's less than 1/10th the capacity of an LTO2 tape's compressed capacity. I can buy prelabeled LTO2 tapes for $38 each.
Re:Do you really need TAPES? (Score:2)
Great. As if the workstations weren't enough of a headache, now we need to patch, maintain, reboot and license the "tape drive". No thanks. Get a linux box with hotswappable sata. Better yet, it'd be less of a headache to reboot the linux box and swap the drive than go through the hassle of running that crapfest. Not to mention Linux could easily support AES encryption of the drives withou
Re:Do you really need TAPES? (Score:2)
You must not have checked very recently. If stored under proper conditions, LTO has a shelf life of 30 years.
I would NEVER trust my archival data to a 400GB drive that cost about as much as a LTO2 tape.
SirWired
Re:Do you really need TAPES? (Score:1)
I would NEVER trust my archival data to a 400GB drive that cost about as much as a LTO2 tape.
We bought a bunch more LTO2 tapes for ~CA$75. Way less than a 400 GB drive and far less things to worry about ("Will the motor spin up if I need it in 2 years?" etc etc)
Re:Do you really need TAPES? (Score:2)
Huh? 18 months? You must be rewriting to the same tape daily. Or more often. The barrier that you are running into is the maximum number of read/write passes rather than any limitation on how long the tape will hold data.
What you need really depends on how long you need to keep the data. If you want to store data on something that you can set aside and reload years later, tape is the way to go.
Ideally, you should use both.
Re:Do you really need TAPES? (Score:2)
Re:Do you really need TAPES? (Score:2)
They are not the only copy (just the ones I pulled out of storge to get to the original paperwork in the same box) and there are copies on newer tape formats. Also, the drive is not from 1982 but the original tapes certainly are. Unfortunately some of the tapes written last week are using drives that are no longer manufactured - IBM and exabyte decided to stop making certain types of drives without making an adequate replacement. Even a truly ancien
Re:Do you really need TAPES? (Score:2)
I don't know where you got that, but we occasionally pull data off of 10 year old dat tapes. They are very reliable.
Re:Do you really need TAPES? (Score:1)
Re:Do you really need TAPES? (Score:2)
The 1980's called, they want their tapes back.
Seriously, tapes last way longer than 18 months. Also, they store well. While a harddrive backup is nice for quick recovery, for long term storage it's a non-starter. First off, I can go over to Dell and buy a 20 pack of LTO-2 tapes for $1,000 or about $50/tape (we use a Dell tape library). Compare that to $88 for a Western Digital WD2000 (200GB ATA100) from Newegg (400GB dr
Ultrium (Score:1)
Re:Ultrium (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Ultrium (Score:2)
Re:Ultrium (Score:2)
I only have 478MB of data to back up, you insensitive clod!
Re:Ultrium (Score:4, Interesting)
The big three in enterprise-class tape library manufacturers are IBM, StorageTek (now part of Sun), and ADIC. Buy from one of them. Don't waste your time with HP.
My personal favorite are IBM's 3581/2/3/4 line. I've worked with all of them and they have some nice features...partitioning, WWN at the drive slot level rather than the drive, virtual I/O ejects, expandability by stacking on frames, highly-available pickers, multiple pickers for high-use environments, etc. Some of the other vendors are catching up, but that's the key...these are all features IBM had in the 3584 five years ago.
Re:Ultrium (Score:3, Insightful)
I know for a fact that it costs me 20% less to buy HP than IBM because of my discount schedule with my reseller. On top of which I also get a great deal on support, 3 year 24x7x6 warranties cost me next to nothing with HP compared with IBM.
Re:Ultrium (Score:2)
I work for a Fortune 500 company and we're large enough to buy direct from both HP and IBM. HP is always more expensive. The hilarious thing is that on disk, HP is significantly more expensive than Hitachi, when it's the exact same equipment (HP just rebrands Hitachi, e.g. XP1024 = Hitachi 9980, XP12000 = Hitachi Tagma, etc.). We're talking like 20% more. Likewise, Hitachi tape equipment is mo
Re:Ultrium (Score:3, Informative)
Depends on what you need... (Score:5, Insightful)
For off-site archiving, you really need tape. There are any number of expandable libraries available from any number of vendors. Personally, I am most familiar with the IBM 3584. This can be expanded to a rather large number of drives and slots, and the LTO drives it usually is equipped with are pretty darn solid. (And the 3592 drives you can buy if you have a LOT of money even more so.)
What you REALLY need to pay attention to when building a tape backup solution (which most customers ignore), is environmental and storage conditions, for both your data center and your off-site storage (if any). I think this is a far more important thing to focus on than what brand of library or drive you purchase. Pay VERY close attention to the data sheets for the tapes and drives. Tape can be easily fouled by humidity that is too low (static), or too high (sticking). Same goes with temperature. Stacking the tapes improperly can result in edge tracking issues, which in turn causes little bits of tape to fly around your drive when the drives rollers break them off when shoving the badly-tracked tape at high speeds past the heads.
For software, again, you have a lot of choices. On one hand, you have "traditional" backup applications like Veritas and Legato. These perform your traditional full, differential, etc., backups. On the other end, you have full-fledged data management apps like IBM's TSM. TSM can be a pain to configure, but if done properly, it is very tape efficient, and it has great support for live DB backups, staged backups, file versioning, data expiration (as opposed to mere tape expiration), etc.
Good Luck,
SirWired
Re:Depends on what you need... (Score:5, Informative)
I've been responsible for tape backups in most of the positions I've held over the last 12 years or so. I've worked with most of the major tape formats including QIC, 4mm DDS, 8mm, AIT, DLT, and LTO.
I'm currently using an IBM 3584 with 3xLTO2 drives. It's almost a pleasure to work with. It doesn't jam. It doesn't lose track of what tapes it has loaded. It's fairly fast. Every other autoloader I've ever worked with has been a pain. ESPECIALLY the DLT loaders. I don't think I've EVER seen a DLT drive last longer than a year before simply crapping out and needing to be replaced. I can count almost a dozen DLT drive failures I've had to cope with. I have yet - in 3 years of continuous use - to physically lose an LTO drive (although I admit all three of mine did lock up at one point due to a firmware bug).
I've also suffered with all of the major backup packages including ArcServe, BackupExec, NetBackup, Legato, and TSM. You know what I've discovered about choosing backup software? It's like picking who to vote for in an election. It's impossible to pick ANY of them based on any sort of positive criteria. You simply have to settle for the one that SUCKS the LEAST. And after being forced to use all of these packages, I can say without a doubt that TSM far and away sucks the least of all of them. You could not pay me enough to run a backup system based on NetBackup EVER again. I wouldn't trust it (or most of the other alleged "backup" systems) with data that had ANY value to me or my employer, whatsoever. I've seen more than one NetBackup installation simply implode, taking the entire catalog with it and needing to basically be rebuilt from scratch, having each and every tape in the inventory re-cataloged from beginning to end. And even when the catalog was still intact, I've had less than a 70% success rate in getting NetBackup to actually RESTORE something I needed restored. Almost a third of my attempts to get data back out of a NetBackup backup system resulted in random, unexplainable failures with cryptic numeric result codes that basically translated to "unknown internal error" according to the docs. On the other end of the spectrum, using TSM, I've successfully restored whole directory trees that were accidentally deleted in just a few minutes, whole Oracle databases that were damaged beyond recovery in a few hours, and I've done a bare-metal restore of both a complete Solaris server and a complete Novell server to a fully functional state in less than 4 hours each. Those last two were scheduled recovery exercises - I don't have ACTUAL failures that need restores very often. We have a bare-metal restore DR exercise for a Windows 2000 system scheduled for the early part of next month, and I expect it will work almost as easily as the other two.
Plus with TSM's Disaster Recovery Manager feature, offsite tape management is brain-dead simple. The system automatically keeps one copy of your data hot and ready in the tape changer on-site, so restores of accidentally deleted or corrupted files/databases can happen immediately, and another copy is fully maintained and rotated to offsite storage by the DRM for a disaster scenario in which the on-site equipment is destroyed. The daily outbound and call-back reports are generated automatically, and plugging them into the offsite storage company's infrastructure is pretty easy. All I usually have to do is take the tapes out of the changer, and put the call-backs in the changer when they're dropped off.
With my current 3584(LTO)/TSM setup, I can safely say - for the first time in over a *decade* of working as a system admin - that I am TOTALLY confident in my ability to restore our data center to 100% functionality in a total-loss scenario. I'd love to find out how many SysAdmins working with any other backup technology have that same level of confidence. I know I personally never had this level of confidence in my backups with any other backup software, and I was always at least a little concerned when using the other tape formats.
Re:Depends on what you need... (Score:2)
TSM's a great *GREAT* piece of software. Lots to love, especially the fact that your data magically comes back out of it.
Portable Backupsets are awesome. If you haven't tried them yet, what are you waiting for?
Re:Depends on what you need... (Score:1)
But make sure that you have it configured correctly and that you understand what it is doing. Also do not reply on vendor consultants to set it up for you as
Here is an idea... (Score:1)
Okay, here is an idea you should consider:
Open your address book and look for $sales-contact at $storage-vendor and remember her phone number. You think that sounded easy? Okay, here comes the hard part:
Pick up the phone, dial her number, and talk to your sales representative.
I'm sure if you tell him/her that you are in the ballpark for $very-big-storage-solution she'll give you a doz
Re:Here is an idea... (Score:1)
You can ask a saleperson to boost their own product or service, or disparage the competitor's products or service, but if you completely rely on them to pick something for you, then you are being incompetent at doing your "due diligence".
I'm not saying that most advice that you get from Slashdot will be much better, but with a broad cro
What backup solution do you use? NetWorker? (Score:2)
If compatible, I would look at something like:8 9.html [storagetek.com]
http://www.storagetek.com/products/product_page23
Business requirement (Score:2)
That's a lot to backup and mouthful. This question seems to direct more toward business requirement. If the rate of the backup required excedes and outgrows the rate of revenue gain or loss due to insufficient backup, the risk must come from the management, I think. The backup cost investmen
VTL might be the way to go (Score:1)
They produce a VTL appliance that emulates many different libraries and uses (IIRC) your own hardware. You can then attache a library behind it and move tapes off to that as you need (for off site storage).
Regards
James
Dell ML6000 (Score:2)
Ok, Ok, I know dell buys it from someone else, like they buy their fibrechannel SANs from EMC... but, we just bought one of these [dell.com] for the Computer Science department at Virginia Tech. Without the additional library component, it's i think 5U's, and holds 20 or 24 tapes. We are using 400GB/800GB LTO-type tapes. We back up to a gateway SAS (Scsi Attached Storage) array (it's slick - 2U, 12x500GB SATA drives, SCSI320 interfaces in back, manages all raid onboard), and flush from there to tape. We bought 75
UDO Archive Appliance (Score:1, Interesting)
How about a UDO Archive Appliance [plasmon.com]?
It's "tiered" storage combining RAID and Ultra Density Optical 30GB disks (soon to be upgraded to 60BG). There is a range of Archive Appliances going from a few slots to over 600, from one internal UDO drive to about 8 or 10 IIRC.
The idea is, the Appliance appears on your network as conventional Network Attached Storagae using FTP, NFS or SAMBA (the RAID part). You put your files on the RAID and the files are migrated to the UDO disks (two copies) which can then be taken
Re:12tb to Tape (Score:1)
In the Real World, tape is widely used for large scale backups. It stores well for years and has a high GB per dollar.
Tell me, what do they use where you work?
Re:12tb to Tape (Score:1)
Re:12tb to Tape (Score:1)
We used to use DLT but there were problems with it. LTO and LTO2 has been fantastic. And moving tapes offsite in case of a disaster can help you sleep better. I do like the xraid, though, very nice stuff.
Re:12tb to Tape (Score:1)
Hey Grub, thanks for being civil, unlike all the other jack-offs that could only spout their superiour supposed knowledge
~ stuff like "you twa
Re:12tb to Tape (Score:1)
I do have superior knowledge. I'm just wasting my time in talking to you.. Oh wait.. no sorry...
Avamar Axion (Score:2)
Disclosure: I am a shareholder and former employee. I haven't worked there for 2 years so this info is a little out of date... but they've been improving it susbstantially in that time frame so use this as a baseline.
They are not a disk to disk staging server company like EMC. They focus on data archival on disk... have a system called RAIN (Redundant Array of Inexpensive Nodes.. or Independent Nodes, both are correct) which uses N-Level parity like a RAI
Re:Seek Professional Help! (Score:2)
Here comes the newbie opinion (Score:1)
So here's my idea: hard drive libraries! Since SATA drives have a standardized connector layout, you could simply have a backplane and swap drives in and out as if they were tapes. As a bonus you'd get much faster read/
Re:Here comes the newbie opinion (Score:1)
Also, HDs may or may not work after coming out of storage, tapes usually do, since there's less to break down in a tape.
Re:Here comes the newbie opinion (Score:1)
Hell, most DAT tapes crap out on me within 2 years. Crap, if I could revise history I'd spend my
Re:Here comes the newbie opinion (Score:1)
Backup tends to be a black hole.... (Score:2)
* Desktop : workstations, laptops, pda's
* Servers : per server - NO centralised management
* DataCenter : dedicated console and bells/whistles
To support the above, there are many types of Recovery scenarios:
* Hot Restore : Replicate to a redundant/failover box/server/Cluster/Datacenter
* Warm Restore : Restore capability to same or supported (redundant) hardware
* Cold Restore : lights-o
LTO3 and STK L700 (Score:3, Informative)
--D
Re:LTO3 and STK L700 (Score:2)
Stay away from the SL500. Had one of those at my last employer. the SL8500 is nice, but has a high entry cost. Scales forever, but very high entry. (have on of those now)
depends (Score:2)
how long do you want to keep the data around?
how much does the data change?
I'd be happy to give you some suggstions, butthose are the questions that need to be answered.
Backup to disk isn't much good if you'reconsidering LTO3. It's faster tham most disk. it only helps with restore latency.
I manage backups for about 300TB of data (mostly oracle, some file server). I'd be happy to through you some suggestions for free, or do a more formal proposal if your management likes that ki