On 11/13/2018 12:15 PM, Dmitri Maziuk via Bacula-users wrote:
On Tue, 13 Nov 2018 09:47:32 -0500
Josh Fisher <jfis...@pvct.com> wrote:
On 11/13/2018 5:38 AM, Peter Milesson wrote:
Hi Markus,
I know my suggestion isn't concerning autoloaders, but it's a safe and
working alternative to tapes (and all the hassles).
I setup a dedicated backup station with 13TB of RAID10 storage. It's
placed in a different location from the servers, and connected to the
network backbone with a 10Gbit/s link. It's running CentOS 7.5, and
utilizing the mhvtl virtual tape library. It's working very smoothly,
and reliably. The cost of building the rig, running, and
administration is quite on the plus side compared to tapes (been
there, done that).
I cannot see how the cost is lower. A 10G link to another location is
extremely expensive in my area. I see the same problem with using cloud
storage, S3, etc. The cost of the mhvtl rig or S3 storage is not the
issue, but rather the ongoing cost of the bandwidth required to transfer
the data in a timely manner. It may be different elsewhere, but in my
area the bandwidth is far more expensive than tapes.
Do you need a 10G link though? -- For the amounts I'm backing up here 1G works
fine.
Bandwidth needs would vary, I suppose. Peter is utilizing an existing
10G link between buildings at (what I consider) the same location. I
misunderstood "different location" to mean that it required an ISP
supplied circuit. Even at 1G, if an ISP is involved, then the cost of
bandwidth must be included when comparing the cost of a remote
disk-based system vs. transporting locally-created tapes. Any recurring
cost like that is going to be an important factor.
Also, 1G may be sufficient, but if that is the only link and it is used
for other apps, then will it still be sufficient when it is being
saturated by backup traffic? Again, it varies. In most cases, the
backups can be scheduled to run when basically nothing else is using
bandwidth, but that is not always the case.
The other issue is RAID-10 and mhvtl: if you do disk backup, why go through the
extra layer of mhvtl? And not use ZFS -- I just finished replacing 4TB drives
w/ 8TB ones in our server, with no downtime.
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