Info Help!

[GregE]

We are still in planning phases of a data center move, and are looking to use DataDomain and remove physical tapes (I have other posts on that). Upper management wants to keep tapes and not do this and I'm trying to best explain the value of getting rid of physical tape.

We would have DataDomain at our main site, and at our DR site, replicating primary pools between sites. Long term archiving (12 years) is the issue, though we don't do that at all now. They don't like the idea of long term storage on disk. I'm thinking at minimum, using physical tape for ONLY archive pools (again, we have none currently), which would be minimal. I'd prefer to remove physical tape completely and be completely and VTL as far as "tapes" are concerned.

Our AS/400 team does their backups completely separate, using BRMS, and will still be using tape exclusively (their data DOES do the 12 year retention to tape), and we currently share a TS3584, so we could still share that and send archive tapes offsite.

I would much prefer to move away from physical tape completely, but I need good information to provide that makes a good case for that. Since I don't do any archiving with what we backup to TSM (Unix, Windows, SQL DB, Oracle DB), I don't have any experience in this realm.

Could you guys give me some info around this that would be helpful to provide?

 

[moon-buddy]

We are still in planning phases of a data center move, and are looking to use DataDomain and remove physical tapes (I have other posts on that). Upper management wants to keep tapes and not do this and I'm trying to best explain the value of getting rid of physical tape.

We would have DataDomain at our main site, and at our DR site, replicating primary pools between sites. Long term archiving (12 years) is the issue, though we don't do that at all now. They don't like the idea of long term storage on disk. I'm thinking at minimum, using physical tape for ONLY archive pools (again, we have none currently), which would be minimal. I'd prefer to remove physical tape completely and be completely and VTL as far as "tapes" are concerned.

Our AS/400 team does their backups completely separate, using BRMS, and will still be using tape exclusively (their data DOES do the 12 year retention to tape), and we currently share a TS3584, so we could still share that and send archive tapes offsite.

I would much prefer to move away from physical tape completely, but I need good information to provide that makes a good case for that. Since I don't do any archiving with what we backup to TSM (Unix, Windows, SQL DB, Oracle DB), I don't have any experience in this realm.

Could you guys give me some info around this that would be helpful to provide?

I would go against you on this.

Physical tape is far the cheapest and easiest to maintain. It is also greener. VTL is expensive for a one year retention.

I manage a Data Center and in all honesty, I could not justify having a VTL for storing large TSM data for even 4 months.

 

[THE_WIPET]

Me to I would go against you on this. VTL are for Day/day or DR only dedup or not Tapes is way cheaper for longterm retention. We keep only our critical data on the VTL.. and for longterm retention I only keep 3 days in the VTL.. the reste is offloaded to tapes

I can achieved 2.2TB on a LTO3 tapes (Exchange and DB only).. I just hope to go with LTO5 for my longterm retention (7 to 15 years) and see what would be the compression ratio.. Dont forget.. If a user need data restore that is 7 years old.. He dont need tier1 or 2 restore capabilities!! he can wait a day or 2 the restore to complete!

You can actualy look for Active data pools for you DR sites

 

[GregE]

Thanks.

Yea thinking more, tape will have to be involved at some level due to possible future long-term archived data. We currently do not have any retentions over 6 weeks. That could change, as well as the archiving for MUCH longer term.

Is tape really cheaper (speaking of regular backups, not long term retention beyond 6 months) when you are incurring daily transfer costs to/from your offsite vault? And storage fees? And in a DR or DR test, with costs related to the tape vault vendor sending large numbers of tapes to/from a DR site?

I have to look into Active Data pools. Never have.

 

[moon-buddy]

Is tape really cheaper (speaking of regular backups, not long term retention beyond 6 months) when you are incurring daily transfer costs to/from your offsite vault? And storage fees? And in a DR or DR test, with costs related to the tape vault vendor sending large numbers of tapes to/from a DR site?

I have to look into Active Data pools. Never have.

Yes. I have done the math - backwards/forwards. The data skews more for tape when you are talking about tons and tons of data.

How does 0.6 cents for tape per GB VS 1.6 cents for HD per GB sounds like? This is media costs only. Factor in electricity, hardware costs, etc. You will see that tape is cheaper.

 

[drrobert6]

I don't see how you can get any better than tape for long term. I guess if you absolutely got to keep it on disk (and get away from tape) there are options with MAID technology, so you do get disk that will be a little greener. I know SGI has the COPAN series that will do this and Falconstor/Nexsan offer a similar option. Don't know pricing on either solution or if it offers you saving long term. Tough to beat tape prices though.

Regards,

Jim Jelf
Storage Engineer
American Express