Alan -- thanks for the feedback. Courier issues aren't really a problem for us -- they're all employees of the department, most in the support group. And, in all honesty, tape utilization isn't that much of an issue. We're a firm believer in "Tape is cheap".
Our off-site is the company hangar, about 13 miles away to the Northwest. It is nearly impossible to have the same event take out both facilities -- we're in Northern Indiana, so the big environmental threat is tornado, and they tend to follow a 'north to east' track. And we've been doing two D/R tests at a hotsite every year for the last 8 years. Most of them quite successful. It's just that we're at an awkward size; most manufacturing outfits don't do D/R. The ones that do, tend to be significantly larger and run to multiple data centers. Me, I've got one data center and 15 remote manufacturing or distribution centers linked to it -- all by frame relay or sub-rate T1. (If you don't recognize the company name -- we do the copper elbows and tees you find in the plumbing section of the hardware store. Also in plastic; in sizes to 5 inches for copper, 8 inches (or larger) for plastic. And valves, from 1/8 inch up to 28 inches, in brass, bronze, plastic, and iron.) Tom -----Original Message----- From: ADSM: Dist Stor Manager [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Allen S. Rout Sent: Friday, January 06, 2006 3:54 PM To: ADSM-L@VM.MARIST.EDU Subject: Re: Running tapes off-site multiple times in a day? >> On Thu, 5 Jan 2006 09:54:34 -0500, "Kauffman, Tom" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> said: > Electronic off-siting isn't an option -- I've seen us cut 400 MB > Oracle redo logs for our SAP/R3 database at the rate of one every > 2.5 minutes for extended time periods (and this is explicitly the > data that has to go off-site). I'd need multiple T1 lines to cover > the traffic, and the cost of a single T1 is considered to be "too > high". I feel for you. You might want to cost out the following things for your physical-carry offsites. Once my chain saw the numbers laid out, the case for the bandwidth and the remote site were compelling. + Courier trips + Inefficient use of tape [ what % full are your offsite vols? This will get worse if you make trips more frequently ] + Risk of courier error/subversion. NIBCO isn't medical, you might not care that much. We had more than one tape request be greeted with a "You want -what-?" sort of shrug. Shudder. + Need to keep extra copies. I don't know if you have an onsite copypool, but we weren't comfortable with having the only recourse for fixing a media error be a 30+hour tape retrieval cycle, especially if your confidence in the courier is less than 100%. + Delay in getting data offsite, which you're already interested in. This has an additional note: In the event of a serious, predictable disaster [hurricane bearing down] you're SOL if you want to get your courier in and out at the 11th hour. You could keep bits moving up until the building falls in, if you're well connected. + Ostrich behavior re: failures; putting off the acquisition of the harware which will serve you in DR scenarios until you're in a disaster mostly means you're not exercising your DR. I've been able to write by-god shell scripts that recover my TSM servers. And test them. For real. (and that was fun!) I've got a gigabit from Gainesville to Atlanta now, and I'm feeling happy about it. The remote site isn't production yet, but we're getting close. - Allen S. Rout