Perhaps the process could queue the files in 650MB (or whatever) size
chunks which could then be copied to tape as soon as the first one on
the disk is complete. If the tape drive ran faster than the system
could fetch the data from the clients, you could simply increase the
number of backup processes writing to the holding area.
My tape drives can write data faster than I can get it from the
network if the files are small (in fact, I often see reduced tape
capacities because of all of the small files). If they're large
files, tape speed is probably the bottleneck. I have seen nearly
200MB/min on a switched 100MB connection with my drives (OnStream
ADR50).
I still think it would be great to be able to get the client machines
to do the catalog compares and snapshot creations in parallel and just
have the server fetch the data and write it to tape.
As for disk space concerns, I purchased a 40GB 7200 RPM Ultra 100
drive yesterday for $177. I wouldn't use IDE drives for network
storage, but as a buffer, I think it would work fine.
...Doug
-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On
Behalf
Of matt barkdull
Sent: Thursday, January 04, 2001 5:36 PM
To: retro-talk
Subject: Re: Holding disk (feature request)
>Just a thought, when does it get time to copy to tape, this seems
>good in theory but I guess it could only be efficient if you can run
>multiple backup sessions in parallel. I'm not sure about the problem
>with speed, I think tape drives can keep up with network speeds
>though I can't tell you that for certain.
>
>I do like the idea of the hard drive taking over as a fail over,
>"the backup must go on".
This might work well for clients with small amounts of data, but just
imagine trying to keep more disk space than your clients on the
server.
Didn't we just go through a discussion on file sizes? So if you do a
backup to file, there is a limitation of 2GB(?) of that file. If
they break that barrier, then the rest of the stuff is fairly easy I
would think.
--
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