* Mike Brodbelt <m.brodbelt AT acu.ac DOT uk> [20041027 06:03]:
> Hi,
> 
> I've been using Amanda for ages, but the data volume I'm trying to back
> up has grown, and I'm looking for a new tape drive. Currently, I'm using
> an internal SCSI Quantum DLT7000, 35Gb native, with Amanda 2.4.2p2 on
> Debian Woody. Filesystems are all XFS, backed up with xfsdump.
> 
> The tape server machine is currently supposed to be backing up 3 other
> machines, and that may grow to 4 in the near future. Largest single
> filesystem is 70Gb (compressed image of this fs currently at 27Gb), and
> I'm currently getting close to the tape capacity on occasions. I have
> two Amanda configs - a weekly cycle with 15 tapes, and a yearly
> "archive" cycle, with twelve, which gets all level 0 backups. This no
> longer fits on the tape...
> 
> I've had a brief look at various drives, and I'm basically considering
> SuperDLT, LTO/Ultrium, or AIT. AIT seems the most cost effective, but
> I've never been a great fan of Sony's "standards"...  The HP Ultrium
> drives seem not too unreasonable for the 100Gb native capacity, whereas
> SuperDLT drives seem rather more pricey. Cost is an issue for us, so I'm
> primarily looking at single drives rather than libraries.
> 
> So, does anyone have any suggestions, good (or bad) experiences, or
> other advice? Reliability is obviously by far the most important
> thing... I'm also curious as to whether people favour internal or
> external drives?

I can't help you with external/internal drive but here's my
experience:
I have been using amanda over the years on different kind of
hardware, 4mm DAT, Exabyte(s), DLT, Ecrix and LTO backing up SGIs
Suns, Linux boxes and I'm quite glad to have moved to LTO. Right now I
have 2 tape libraries, one with a single DLT that has worked
flawlessly for more than 4 years except for a single tape failure (it
will be phased out at the next failure) and another library with 8 LTO
Seagate tape drives. Works fine except for one failure (2 days ago!)
for one of the LTO drives. Bad luck? I don't know. I would tend to
stay away from Ecrix -- very flacky in my experience but I might have
been unlucky again.

I've had the same feelings for AIT and I think I'm not alone sharing
them! I've never had the opportunity to tinkle with SuperDLT so I'll
make no further comment on it.

I'm not sure what kind of box will have the tape drive but
it has to be able to sustain 15MBs for a LTO to stream which
is 3 times more than the DLT7000 you already have.

Just curious:
You say above that HP LTO/Ultrium is "too unreasonable for the 100Gb
native capacity"...Do you mean unreasonable in terms of $$$ ?

HTH,
jf

> 
> Any/all opinions would be much appreciated.
> 
> Mike.

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