Tape Backup

jbaello

I am looking into purchasing a Tape Backup solution, do you guys have any recommendation of what is suitable? it has to at least hold 5 TB per full backup.

dynamik

Any reason you'd want that over an external USB/eSATA drive?

jbaello

I had an accident over my external USB and that is the only copy I had, who knows if I get more severe accident that it will take a disk specialist to restore this I just wanted a peace of mind. and backing up an external USB drive into an internal HD is pretty huge for it to handle.

sprkymrk

dynamik wrote:

Any reason you'd want that over an external USB/eSATA drive?

Simple answer - tape rotation.

If you make backups every weekday Mon-Friday night, and you have 2 sets (week 1 and week 2) and 1 backup that gets rotated out of the cycle every 4 weeks that's 11 tapes initially and about 1 new tape per month. With the tape solution you install one device (the tape backup unit) and then rotate tapes. Not really practical with an external USB or eSATA drive. Since he mentioned 5TB of data I assumed this was a business solution and not a personal backup.

dynamik

Oh yea!?

Well I do drive rotation

We're a design shop and I'm over 500gb/backup now, so it's faster, simpler, and more cost effective for us to go that route.

I know it seems like overkill for just 5gb, but if you have two drives and alternate the days you bring them in, you can build up a pretty extensive library over time. Even if one dies, you still have the slightly older backup on the other (or multiple if you use more than two). That's just something to think about. Remember, tapes can wear out and suffer from other problems as well.

Isn't Microsoft's official position something like three backups with one off-site?

jbaello

Exactly our tape ended physically being damaged by a powervault solution, and when I called a tape repair they want to charge 6,000 $

jryantech

dynamik wrote:

I know it seems like overkill for just 5gb

5tb

jryantech

jbaello wrote:

Exactly our tape ended physically being damaged by a powervault solution, and when I called a tape repair they want to charge 6,000 $

dynamik

jryantech wrote:

dynamik wrote:

I know it seems like overkill for just 5gb

5tb

So yea, everyone can feel free to ignore everything I've said in this thread

tiersten

dynamik wrote:

I know it seems like overkill for just 5gb, but if you have two drives and alternate the days you bring them in, you can build up a pretty extensive library over time. Even if one dies, you still have the slightly older backup on the other (or multiple if you use more than two). That's just something to think about. Remember, tapes can wear out and suffer from other problems as well.

Hard disks are more fragile than tape. Thats quite important if you're sending these things offsite. Our daily tape box is bashed about quite a bit by the offsite storage company when they courier it to and from us. A hard disk won't survive that treatment but a tape inside the box is perfectly okay.

We use Tivoli with a 260 slot LTO-4 tape library which is a tad overkill for you but its been extremely reliable so far. We're also considering getting VTL technology to dedupe as well but thats a future project.

astorrs

I've always been happy with Overland Storage NEO libraries. They are OEM'd by lots of others (HP sells the NEO 4100 as the MSL6000 and the NEO 8000 as the ESL E-Series). They're web manageable, expandable by adding more drives, and stackable (buy one now add more libraries later - yet operate as one unit).

I've seen about a dozen go into production over the last 6 years on my recommendation and everyone has been happy. You still have your share of problems (as with any robotic library) but their support is excellent and they will happily just swap drives or parts that are acting funny without making you run around in circles like some other vendors. I prefer to buy direct from Overland instead of going through an OEM like HP as the price is better and its the same device.

Given your capacity needs you're not quite at the NEO level so maybe the ARCVault series from them would be a good fit (that replaced their PowerLoader line which I've used before), but I can't speak to it directly having never used one..

http://www.overlandstorage.com/US/products/archive.html

dynamik wrote:

Oh yea!?

Well I do drive rotation

We're a design shop and I'm over 500gb/backup now, so it's faster, simpler, and more cost effective for us to go that route.

Until you get file system corruption that goes unnoticed for a few weeks and all your backups are corrupt (you don't keep monthly "disks" do you?). Then you get to call someone like me in and pay a few thousand to have stuff recovered/rebuilt while your business is down (I'm speaking from experience here, I've had clients who wouldn't listen).

sprkymrk

dynamik wrote:

Remember, tapes can wear out and suffer from other problems as well.

That's why my example included 11 tapes, with one being rotated out of production and into storage every month. You buy 1 new tape per month, so no single tape gets used for more than a year before being removed from the cycle. Tapes are also much more durable than hard drives.

astorrs

sprkymrk wrote:

Tapes are also much more durable than hard drives.

Yup, and cheaper in the long run.

My usual nightly B2D2T backup rotation is as follows:

Friday - Full
Saturday to Thursday - Diff

Tapes are sent off-site to Iron Mountain on Friday afternoon and the previous weeks tapes are returned and stored in a fire-safe vault.

4 sets of weekly's. Monthy's (done after month-end closing, usually the weekend following the 8th of the month) for 2 years and Yearly's (January's monthly) for 7 years.

Try pulling data off a 6.5 year old hard drive.

dynamik

Fine, fine. I admit defeat.

It works for us though; we're small-time. We can use DVDs for any archival we have to do.

To be fair, I did misread the original post. Damn cat was distracting me at the time. It was the cute one, not the fat, stupid one, so I actually gave him some attention. If he wants to do something fun, he attacks the other cat. Nothing I can do is nearly as entertaining, and he usually ignores me

sprkymrk

dynamik wrote:

Fine, fine. I admit defeat.

That's all right dynamik. One bad post in more than 3000 ain't bad. I actually made 2 bad ones in my first 3000 posts, so you're doing twice as good as I did. :P