Re: [Bacula-users] [Bacula-devel] RFC: backing up hundreds of TB
2009-11-28 11:33:07
Ralf Gross wrote:
> Arno Lehmann schrieb:
>> 27.11.2009 13:23, Ralf Gross wrote:
>>> [crosspost to -users and -devel list]
>>>
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> we are happily using bacula since a few years and already backing up
>>> some dozens of TB (large video files) to tape.
>>>
>>> In the next 2-3 years the amount of data will be growing to 300+ TB.
I guess my first question is how fast will that ramp up be? LTO-5 is set
to hit the market next year, with one vendor already doing a pre-order deal
where they sell you LTO-4 (I assume for way more than it's worth) then
upgrade you to LTO-5 when the drives become available. I presume that's a
really bad headache in the making but I could see upgrading to LTO-5 in
many data centers by early 2011.
Could you make do until that time with copies going to multiple home-brewed
raid arrays in different buildings so you can copy the data to disk and
then back it up to tape later?
>>> We are looking for some very pricy solutions for the primary storage
>>> at the moment (NetApp etc). But we (I) are also looking if it is
>>> possible to go on with the way we store the data right now. Which is
>>> just some large raid arrays and backup2tape.
>> Good luck... while I agree that SAN/NAS appliances tend to look
>> expensive, they've got their advantages when your space has to grow to
>> really big sizes. Managing only one setup, when some physical disk
>> arrays work together is one of these advantages.
>
> I fully agree. But this comes with a price that is 5-10 time higher
> than a setup with simple RAID arrays and a large changer. In the end
> I'll present 2 or 3 concepts and others will decide how valuable the
> data is.
>
I recently saw this article http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=23765
If you need high performance that would be a lousy solution but if you just
need high capacity, you could probably get awesome performance for those
"occasional" reads with more RAM. What I mean is that this might be a
great place to put a 2nd copy of the data but you wouldn't be able to back
it up entirely to tape in a reasonable backup window. However if you only
need to read a single 5-10 GB file off it every couple hours, the
performance should be really good.
With the price difference between something like this and a SAN it seems
like it might be worth it for some big shops to try to 3 or more way
redundancy as you'd still come out way ahead. Of course if you were trying
to do video editing right off it or an enormous database with a lot of
reads/searches/writes you'd probably be pulling your hair out a lot. Other
than that the only downside I see is that you have to take it down to swap
out a dead drive. Proper cooling and modern drives should give this thing
decent reliability, but you'd want additional layers of redundancy to allow
for offline swapping of parts, software/firmware upgrades, etc.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Let Crystal Reports handle the reporting - Free Crystal Reports 2008 30-Day
trial. Simplify your report design, integration and deployment - and focus on
what you do best, core application coding. Discover what's new with
Crystal Reports now. http://p.sf.net/sfu/bobj-july
_______________________________________________
Bacula-users mailing list
Bacula-users AT lists.sourceforge DOT net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bacula-users
|
|
|