Alan -- thanks for the feedback.

Courier issues aren't really a problem for us -- they're all employees
of the department, most in the support group. And, in all honesty, tape
utilization isn't that much of an issue. We're a firm believer in "Tape
is cheap".

Our off-site is the company hangar, about 13 miles away to the
Northwest. It is nearly impossible to have the same event take out both
facilities -- we're in Northern Indiana, so the big environmental threat
is tornado, and they tend to follow a 'north to east' track.

And we've been doing two D/R tests at a hotsite every year for the last
8 years. Most of them quite successful. It's just that we're at an
awkward size; most manufacturing outfits don't do D/R. The ones that do,
tend to be significantly larger and run to multiple data centers. Me,
I've got one data center and 15 remote manufacturing or distribution
centers linked to it -- all by frame relay or sub-rate T1.

(If you don't recognize the company name -- we do the copper elbows and
tees you find in the plumbing section of the hardware store. Also in
plastic; in sizes to 5 inches for copper, 8 inches (or larger) for
plastic. And valves, from 1/8 inch up to 28 inches, in brass, bronze,
plastic, and iron.)


Tom

-----Original Message-----
From: ADSM: Dist Stor Manager [mailto:ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU] On Behalf Of
Allen S. Rout
Sent: Friday, January 06, 2006 3:54 PM
To: ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU
Subject: Re: Running tapes off-site multiple times in a day?

>> On Thu, 5 Jan 2006 09:54:34 -0500, "Kauffman, Tom"
<KauffmanT AT NIBCO DOT COM> said:


> Electronic off-siting isn't an option -- I've seen us cut 400 MB
> Oracle redo logs for our SAP/R3 database at the rate of one every
> 2.5 minutes for extended time periods (and this is explicitly the
> data that has to go off-site). I'd need multiple T1 lines to cover
> the traffic, and the cost of a single T1 is considered to be "too
> high".

I feel for you.  You might want to cost out the following things for
your physical-carry offsites. Once my chain saw the numbers laid out,
the case for the bandwidth and the remote site were compelling.


+ Courier trips

+ Inefficient use of tape
  [ what % full are your offsite vols?  This will get worse if you
    make trips more frequently ]

+ Risk of courier error/subversion.  NIBCO isn't medical, you might
  not care that much.  We had more than one tape request be greeted
  with a "You want -what-?" sort of shrug.  Shudder.

+ Need to keep extra copies.  I don't know if you have an onsite
  copypool, but we weren't comfortable with having the only recourse
  for fixing a media error be a 30+hour tape retrieval cycle,
  especially if your confidence in the courier is less than 100%.

+ Delay in getting data offsite, which you're already interested in.
  This has an additional note:  In the event of a serious, predictable
  disaster [hurricane bearing down] you're SOL if you want to get your
  courier in and out at the 11th hour.  You could keep bits moving up
  until the building falls in, if you're well connected.

+ Ostrich behavior re: failures; putting off the acquisition of the
  harware which will serve you in DR scenarios until you're in a
  disaster mostly means you're not exercising your DR.  I've been able
  to write by-god shell scripts that recover my TSM servers.  And test
  them.  For real.  (and that was fun!)


I've got a gigabit from Gainesville to Atlanta now, and I'm feeling
happy about it.  The remote site isn't production yet, but we're
getting close.



- Allen S. Rout