On Tue, 22 Jan 2008, Karl-Heinz Herrmann wrote:
> Hi Justin,
>
> thanks for your suggestion to look into the SUN Tape Solutions.
>
>
>> Date: Sun, 20 Jan 2008 16:26:19 -0500 (EST)
>> From: Justin Piszcz <jpiszcz AT lucidpixels DOT com>
>> To: The Answer Gang <tag AT lists.linuxgazette DOT net>
>> Subject: Re: [TAG] large file server/backup system: technical
>> opinions?
>
> I've used an old SCSI tape drive way back when these had 4GB/tape --
> and frankly the data handling was a pain in the ass (tar streams).
Without (enterprise backup software) such as NetBackup (#1) or other, (Legato,
or others) it is very painful.
>
>> Not sure on your budget but if you got a tape library and an SL500
>> and some tape drives, use Veritas NetBackup it would take care of
>> that no problem.
>
>
> Well -- the SL500 would be outside our budget. Also the specs are quite
> a bit more than what we would need in the few coming years.
>
> The SL48 on the other hand might just about fall into budget range.
Ok.
>
>> Although a tape library for 4-6TB is probably over-kill, if you had
>> 100TB+ you may want tape :)
>
> Right now we have about these 6TB on drives. This is growing and we
> have to archive the old data, we can't just throw them out at some
> time.
That is where tape comes in, 6TB is nothing and if its compressible data
you'll see great returns.
>
>> But if you want a real solution, I'd go with an SL500 and 2-4 LTO-3
>> or LTO-4 drives. LTO-3 tape is 400GB uncompressed, LTO-4 is 800GB,
>> but LTO-3 is currently the sweet spot for $38-40/tape.
>
>
> One thing is not yet quite clear to me. I connect that SL500 (or SL48)
> via FC or SCSI to a computer. Then the whole SL500 looks like one giant
> tape? Or how is this represented to the outside? So for
> archive/retrieval I would definitely need an *additional* software
> (like Veritas NetBack you mentioned)?
The SL500 connects via (either Fiber Channel or SCSI)- that is the
robotic controller, which is at the top of the unit.
The drives are connected separately via either (Fiber Channel or SCSI).
>
>
> With the current budget of ~15k$ we need basically both -- new disk
> space *and* a way to back up the new disk space. So we might have to
> stick to backuppc as software and two raids -- one data, one backup and
> plan for a tape archiving system next year.
One nice thing about tape is it does not require power and it also is nice
in the event of a disaster or someone accidentally running rm -rf on the
wrong directory or directory/ext3/filesystem corruption/etc.
>
> Can the tape handle something like "raid1"? I've no good feeling
> putting data on the tape and deleting all other copies. That's also the
> reason why I woul try to adapt the hard drive space first so we at
> least can accomodate this years growing data needs (including a second
> copy on different hard drives).
You could backup what you have on disk and then run incrementals over them,
LTO-2/3/4 technology it quite good, as long as you keep you clean your tape
drives regularly, they're fairly reliable.
>
>
> Is there also software around which would transparently pull old data
> of a disk array and store them on tape? and retrieve the files if you
> access them? Research center Juelich had that years ago when I was
> doing my PhD there. What price tags would we be talking then?
Some companies actually do this for their web orders/etc-- you would need
to create scripts that pull the files off the tapes and backup as needed.
It is a single command either way in NetBackup (bpbackup or bprestore).
>
> Ah.. I see: Suns "BakBone NetVault" can do D2D2T..... I'll go read some
> more.... Thanks again for pointing these Tape systems out to me.
NetBackup can also do this.
>
>
> K.-H.
>
Including the veritas-bu mailing list on this thread as well, they may
also have some good insight into your problem.
Justin.
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