> From: Steve Costaras <stevecs AT chaven DOT com>
> Subject: Re: [Bacula-users] Reliable Backups without Tapes?
> To: "Paul Mather" <paul AT gromit.dlib.vt DOT edu>
> Cc: "Ken Mandelberg" <km AT mathcs.emory DOT edu>, bacula-users AT 
> lists.sourceforge DOT net
> Date: Friday, July 15, 2011, 6:44 AM
>
>
>
> On 2011-07-15 07:28, Paul Mather wrote:
>
> On Jul 14, 2011, at 7:56 PM, Ken Mandelberg wrote:
>
> Under Legato the license restriction artificially keep the "file-device"
> small relative to the tape storage. However, these days disks are
> cheaper than tapes and license free we could afford a lot of disk space.
>
> I know hard drives are cheap these days, but I didn't realise they were 
> cheaper than tape nowadays.  LTO-4 media works out at less than 5 cents per 
> GB (uncompressed) last time I bought it, and I believe LTO-5 is less than 4 
> cents per GB (again, uncompressed).
>
> But, don't underestimate some of the perhaps-neglected advantages of tape:
>
> - Easier to offsite for long-term archiving and disaster recovery
> - WORM capability for regulatory compliance where needed
> - Easier to expand total capacity---just buy more media
> - Increasing capacity doesn't continually eat up rack space and drive up 
> power consumption
>
> Personally, I like the fact that Bacula supports a mixed disk/tape solution, 
> allowing for disk to provide faster near-line access to more recent backups 
> (e.g., incrementals) and tape for older material.
>
> One more item to that list is data integrity.   Most consumer HD's have a BER 
> 10^14, if you pay for 'enterprise' versions you may get to 10^15.   Tape 
> (LTO) is 10^17 and though not common generally here T1000's are 10^19.
>
>
> I've been using diskless backups since I started using bacula.  Prior to 
> bacula, I was using amanda.
> I use a SuperMicro chassis with 8 removable SATA drives.  I use 1 for the 
> OS/bacula, so it stays in at all times.  The other 7 are for a week of 
> backups.  Every week, I run a script to unmount the SATA drives so I can 
> remove them and swap them with 7 other drives.  I have 3 sets of 7.
> Works quite well, and much cheaper than tape.
>

Hard drives are cheaper than tape for small backups. However when your
7 drives grows tape becomes cheaper. Imagine having to hot swap out
20+ drives each week.

John

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
AppSumo Presents a FREE Video for the SourceForge Community by Eric 
Ries, the creator of the Lean Startup Methodology on "Lean Startup 
Secrets Revealed." This video shows you how to validate your ideas, 
optimize your ideas and identify your business strategy.
http://p.sf.net/sfu/appsumosfdev2dev
_______________________________________________
Bacula-users mailing list
Bacula-users AT lists.sourceforge DOT net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bacula-users