I like the idea of duplicating to a separate device.  That way you
don't have people touching the one you really care about.  And leaving
the original tapes alone, untouched, not being bounced around in a
truck, not going through different environmental changes, etc, is a
very very good idea.

However, when using anything w/o a barcode reader, you're relying on a
human being to tell NBU which tape is in which slot.  Correctly.
Every time.

I wonder if your hardware vendor would allow you to trade up one of
the units for the next larger.  Then you could use this for backups,
and the other 48 for duplication.  You wouldn't think that the cost
would be all that much greater if you have the same number of drives
and robotic units - might even be cheaper than buying a stacker.

You don't say what DLT you're using, but you may want to consider
moving up to 8000's for the extra capacity (40GB vs 35 or 20).

I'd be tempted to stick with either the same vendor I already have
(easier to keep firmware, etc, up to date, better for support, etc),
or maybe purchase from the Unix vendor (may get better support when
all the pieces come from same company).  Then again, I work for a
software company, YMMV.

L

Robert Watterson writes:
> Hi All,
> 
>   I'm looking for advice and also a basic sanity check on the following
> proposal:
> 
>  We currently have 2 48-slot DLT silos. These libraries meet all of
> our backup needs and allow our staff to do a very minimal amount of
> tape juggling in and out of the silos.
> 
>   We now have a new mandate to regularly send copies of backup
> images off-site.  We want to keep our primary images in the silos to
> facilitate quick recoveries.  Our thinking is that we don't want to
> duplicate the images to other tapes in the silos as we will need to
> keep a larger pool of free tapes in them, and also will need to
> start injecting and ejecting tapes on a daily basis. We feel that a
> small tape stacker might allow us to easily create offsite images as
> needed.
> 
> So my question is, is anyone else doing this? How about any advice
> on stackers for unix boxes?
> 
> 
> 
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-- 
Larry Kingery 
       If at first you DO succeed, try not to look astonished!