I'd probably go DDS-4, then buy a second DDS-4 unit when needed, as you add more clients. Retro intelligently uses chained tape drives, writing to one, then the other. Use an incremental backup process.
Recent previous Retro talks had discussions of relative merits of various types of backup drive units, too. Check the archive.
-Rob
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From: Adrian Smith
Reply To: retro-talk
Sent: Thursday, 10 August 2000 12:55 PM
To: retro-talk
Subject: Newcomer Questions
Hi all,
I am brand new to this list and I have looking for some
suggestions/comments...
I have been using Retrospect for a while on my home computers to
back-up to CD-RWs. After a particularly close shave with a crashed
hard disk this week my supervisor has decided that we need to get a
backup system running for our lab. (We have been trying to get
something organised on an Institute wide basis for a while but it has
proven too difficult to get full cooperation). We currently have 5
Macs (total hard disk space ~30GB) that would we would like to backup
each night. The setup we are looking at would be the following...
* DAT Tape drive - DDS3 or DDS4 attached to a PowerMac 7300, probably
Sony (or LaCie which I think uses a Sony mechanism), no particular
reason to go with Sony.
* Retrospect 4.3 with clients on each of the Macs.
After the intial backup there will not be a huge amount of change
from day to day as we will not be backing up our raw data files as
they live on the UNIX server (which is already effectively covered -
by law our raw data has to be accessible for at least 10 years).
Ideally we would like the system to be scalable so that when the rest
of the Institute realises how important it is they can be added
later. This would mean approximately 5-10 fold more machines. I
suspect that for the maximum number here we would probably want a
larger capacity drive? Or could we just add a second DAT drive and
split the backups into 2 groups? How would Retrospect handle that?
Any general comments would be welcome, especially with regards to
tape drives (I have never used one before).
Thanks
Adrian Smith
--
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Adrian Smith (PhD Student) T CELL BIOLOGY GROUP
Centenary Institute of Cancer Medicine & Cell Biology
Locked Bag No.6 Newtown, NSW 2042 AUSTRALIA.
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