Am 02.04.2007 um 19:51 schrieb Adam Tauno Williams:
We currently use LTO. It works ok - for a tape. As all tapes it is
slow as hell
for recovery case, a LTO media is mechanically robust but can't be
used that often (we change media after 15 backup cycles and already
had rejected tapes).
We have three LTO drives; life cycle of a tape is MUCH MUCH longer
than
that.
Can be - we also have tapes which last longer, but after 3 tapes in a
short
period which were rejected because of write errors after less then 20
write
cycles we decided to not take the risk and were going down to 15 cycles
generally.
We also have more then one LTO drive in use (here in our company and for
different customers) and - yes - some years ago a tape was a good
idea. But
especially to backup current amounts of data tape is completely
outnumbered.
Next time we need to change backup system we will go to USB/eSATA
disks - one disk for each tape media we currently have in use:
Pro:
- you don't need an expensive tape-drive
- you can already have 1TB per media
You can get 1TB drives?
Ok - give it 3 month ... :
HITACHI HDS721010KLA330 - Auftragsbezogene Bestellung - vorauss. ab
11.07.2007 lieferbar - http://www.emedia-shop.de/
- you can reuse such a disk much more often then 15 times
Not likely if you are trundling them back and forth between an offsite
backup location. The durability of a caddied drive isn't event
remotely
close to that of a magnetic tape. Not even close.
I'm in project business: I have to do "show programming" at customers
- to have
a local copy of what I did on the remote system (these systems are
not always
accessible for remote administration) I'm used to have a copy of such
systems on
a 100GB 2.5" USB disk. This disk always is carried in my laptop bag,
it has to
deal with mechanical, electrical and whatever conditions - I just
don't care
about this disk - after much more then a year it still is happily alive.
Every laptop has a disk - if disks would be that easy to break no
company would
dare to produce disks and give a 2 or more year warranty.
- a disk _may_ not be usable as long as a tape media
It won't be.
A disk may not be a good idea as a 10 year archive media - I don't
know. But
for daily backup it lasts long enough. If you have this one media per
week day,
one media per week, one media per month scheme you are quite save
that you have
a recent backup.
[...] but for a server
with up to a
terrabyte online storage it is a robust, easy to handle, relatively
cheap and
Not robust. Not easy to handle (*FRAGILE*) and certainly NOT
electromagnetically robust; one good jolt of static electricity and
your backup is fried. Magnetic tape is amazingly resilient.
Maybe you work in a high voltage environment, maybe in thunderstorm
research ... but for what I know the extra bucks for tape infrastructure
can be invested in something more useful.
I have been with you less then 2 years ago: backup - that means tape
or WORM
or something other designed to be used as backup. Times change.I had
to change
my mind.
BTW: if you are really in a hurry and you did full system backups you
can even
activate one of this backup disks directly - in this case you can be
back online
less then half an hour after you started "recovery" - even without
having
completely redundant hardware. There are customers who would give a
leg for
such a message after the server gave smoke signals ...
Ralf
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