Veritas-bu

Re: [Veritas-bu] Tapeless backup environments?

2007-09-22 09:54:41
Subject: Re: [Veritas-bu] Tapeless backup environments?
From: "Ed Wilts" <ewilts AT ewilts DOT org>
To: "'Jeff Lightner'" <jlightner AT water DOT com>, "'Justin Piszcz'" <jpiszcz AT lucidpixels DOT com>
Date: Sat, 22 Sep 2007 08:42:18 -0500
1)  Disk ages and breaks too.  
2)  Transport is cheap.  I'd be surprised if I couldn't transport a thousand
tapes for the cost of a terabyte of storage.  Bandwidth to move data is
*NOT* cheap.  20GB/day requires 3Mbps of pipe.
3)  I spend more time replacing disk drives than I do replacing tapes or
tape drives.   To back up my 1200 SAN-based spindles, I have 6 LTO-3 drives.
It sounds like you need to either replace your tape drives or treat them
better.  We do work on our robots perhaps once every few months.  We replace
disk drives on a weekly basis.  NetBackup requires a *lot* more time than
the robots or the disk drives ever will.  

   .../Ed

--
Ed Wilts, RHCE, BCFP, BCSD
Mounds View, MN, USA
mailto:ewilts AT ewilts DOT org

> -----Original Message-----
> From: veritas-bu-bounces AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu [mailto:veritas-bu-
> bounces AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu] On Behalf Of Jeff Lightner
> Sent: Friday, September 21, 2007 9:34 AM
> To: Justin Piszcz
> Cc: veritas-bu AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu
> Subject: Re: [Veritas-bu] Tapeless backup environments?
> 
> Disk is not cheaper?  You've done a cost analysis?
> 
> Not saying you're wrong and I haven't done an analysis but I'd be
> surprised if disks didn't actually work out to be cheaper over time:
> 
> 1) Tapes age/break - We buy on average several hundred tapes a year -
> support on a disk array for failing disks may or may not be more
> expensive.
> 
> 2) Transport/storage - We have to pay for offsite storage and transfer
> -
> it seems just putting an array in offsite facility would eliminate the
> need for transportation (in trucks) cost.  Of course there would be
> cost
> in the data transfer disk to disk but since everyone seems to have
> connectivity over the internet it might be possible to do this using a
> B2B link rather than via dedicated circuits.
> 
> 3) Labor cost in dealing with mechanical failures of robots.   This one
> is hidden in salary but every time I have to work on a robot it means I
> can't be working on something else.   While disk drives fail it doesn't
> seem to happen nearly as often as having to fish a tape out of a drive
> or the tape drive itself having failed.
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Justin Piszcz [mailto:jpiszcz AT lucidpixels DOT com]
> Sent: Friday, September 21, 2007 10:08 AM
> To: Jeff Lightner
> Cc: veritas-bu AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu
> Subject: Re: [Veritas-bu] Tapeless backup environments?
> 
> 
> 
> On Fri, 21 Sep 2007, Jeff Lightner wrote:
> 
> > Yesterday our director said that he doesn't intend to ever upgrade
> > existing STK L700 because eventually we'll go tapeless as that is
> what
> > the industry is doing.   The idea being we'd have our disk backup
> > devices here (e.g. Data Domain) and transfer to offsite storage to
> > another disk device so as to eliminate the need for ever transporting
> > tapes.
> >
> > It made me wonder if anyone was actually doing the above already or
> was
> > planning to do so?
> >
> 
> That seems to be the way people are 'thinking' but the bottom line is
> disk
> still is not cheaper than LTO-3 tape and there are a lot of advantages
> to
> tape; however, convicing management of this is an uphill battle.
> 
> Justin.

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