Tape vs. Disk Backups

[Asgorath]

I'm looking at buying a Dell 124T, 8 tape, LTO3, SAS autoloader to backup my company data. I am curious about using hard drives instead of tapes. Would you guys link me to some good disk backup products to basically do this job? What is the rough cost of each of these solutions?

I need to backup ~1.2TB monthly and 600GB daily

 

[Grentz]

Tape still has the edge in capacity and price, but I do like HDD backups these days. It is not linear, and no tape drives to worry about (which seem to fail on me after a few years always, even the good ones). Really you can use any external HDDs you like (or even internals), that is the beauty of it.

But for that much data, you might be better off with tape. Or potentially waiting for the new 2TB HDDs supposedly coming soon.

 

[k1pp3r]

Do you really have 600 GB of changed data each day? Thats a lot for only 1.2 TB a month (assuming 1.2 TB is a full backup.)

That LTO3 auto loader will set you back a couple G's which will hurt

 

[SuperChicken]

Grentz IIRC those 2tb WD drives are out in the US as of a few days ago.

 

[TechieSooner]

For that much data, from cost standpoint hard drives are really the only way to go. That or network backup to a NAS or offsite storage.

I'm personally just sick of tapes. I wish they would die off, I really do

 

[Asgorath]

Do you really have 600 GB of changed data each day? Thats a lot for only 1.2 TB a month (assuming 1.2 TB is a full backup.)

That LTO3 auto loader will set you back a couple G's which will hurt

I'm rounding up. But I'd say at least 400GB of backups each day. The plan is a full backup every month with differentials every day, backup the differentials throughout the month. Alot of the files will just be full backups because they don't lend well to differentials such as quickbooks data, databases, and some big files that unless we're doing byte level backups...don't take to diffs.

 

[Sp00n]

LTO4 single loader

I still don't trust my backups to a disk.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

Dells RD1000...I've been almost exclusively using this in clients servers for a while now.
It's a hot swap removable SATA unit..that takes cartridges that are built around a 2.5" SATA drive.
The RD1000 unit itself comes in a couple of different connection types..I prefer the SATA one over USB ones. I don't like USB for backups of large amounts of data. I use the internal units, go right to an internal SATA controller on the server.
You can get different sized cartridges for the RD1000...I believe currently their largest drive is 600 megs native, 1TB compressed.

Yes the cartridges are expensive..but you don't need a cleaning cartridge, and you don't need to replace them every year or every 2 years, they have a daily mount life of something like 10 years. And they're durable...not as delicate as tapes.

Pretty fast too.

Tandberg is the OEM for these, you can get them cheaper than through Dell (which puts like a 15% premium on them just for slapping their name on it).

HP also sells them as "RDX" drives.

 

[TechieSooner]

I believe currently their largest drive is 600 megs native, 1TB compressed.

That's why these didn't work for me. And that's probably what will keep the OP from getting them as well if he's got 1.2TB of data. While it may fit now you'll be soon looking for something else in the future once you pass that mark.

 

[videodrone83]

you can always go VMWare with a failover and backups

 

[mngl1500]

I just switched to BDR2100r for my 3 servers plus the offsite option. Not only does it do the backups every 15 minutes it can have a virtual server up and running in 30 minutes. For getting the offsite data back in the event of a total site failure of everything they overnight you a new system with your data on it so you are running virtual servers quickly while waiting on replacement hardware.

I am also still doing 1 tape backup a week which goes home with me. I do not know how much longer I will do this though. I have done several test restores using the BDR for files and for a single email message.

 

[Dan_D]

I'm looking at buying a Dell 124T, 8 tape, LTO3, SAS autoloader to backup my company data. I am curious about using hard drives instead of tapes. Would you guys link me to some good disk backup products to basically do this job? What is the rough cost of each of these solutions?

I need to backup ~1.2TB monthly and 600GB daily

Hard drives aren't the way to go in my opinion. Especially not commercial hard drives like the WD 2TB drives. They do not have the same MTBF rating as their enterprise class counterparts do. They also aren't warrantied as well. Plus the performance of SATA hard drives is abysmal in such usage scenarios. LTO's are actually capable of faster writes than hard drives typically are. If your consumer level WD 2 TB drive shits the bed and you RMA it you'd be lucky to get it back in a week. A Dell Powervault 124T gets a technician to work on it the next business day.

Tape still has the edge in capacity and price, but I do like HDD backups these days. It is not linear, and no tape drives to worry about (which seem to fail on me after a few years always, even the good ones). Really you can use any external HDDs you like (or even internals), that is the beauty of it.

But for that much data, you might be better off with tape. Or potentially waiting for the new 2TB HDDs supposedly coming soon.

The newer tape drives are actually much faster than you might imagine. The fact that they are linear isn't as big a deal as it once was. Yes tape drives fail after a few years but they are heavily mechanical. This is to be expected. The autoloader the OP is looking at has an operational life time of about 4 to 5 years. He can get more out of it by replacing the tape drive in the autoloader. It is replacable. Beyond that those 2TB drives are NOT enterprise class and I wouldn't trust critical data to them. Tapes are small, relatively cheap and can be stored off site easily and they aren't as prone to damage when dropped. With an 8 slot LTO 3 autoloader the OP can store 3.2TB minimum. This should be sufficient for some time based on his original post. It isn't the cheapest solution but that tape drive combined with Arcserve, Backup Exec, Netbackup, TSM, etc. is the right way to go.

Do you really have 600 GB of changed data each day? Thats a lot for only 1.2 TB a month (assuming 1.2 TB is a full backup.)

That LTO3 auto loader will set you back a couple G's which will hurt

This is true. 600GB of changed data daily is well within what the Powervault 124T can handle. But yes the cost does hurt. They are about $3,000 if I recall correctly.

Grentz IIRC those 2tb WD drives are out in the US as of a few days ago.

So? They aren't the right tool for storing enterprise class data.

I'm rounding up. But I'd say at least 400GB of backups each day. The plan is a full backup every month with differentials every day, backup the differentials throughout the month. Alot of the files will just be full backups because they don't lend well to differentials such as quickbooks data, databases, and some big files that unless we're doing byte level backups...don't take to diffs.

I'd do weekly backups with daily differentials.

LTO4 single loader

I still don't trust my backups to a disk.

Nor should you. Disks have much more that can go wrong with them than tapes do. I also recommend doing backups to disk first, and then copying to tape. This is useful as it gives you a buffer for more easily accessable local restores. This also provides some redundancy should you get a bad tape. Its rare but it does happen occasionally.

That's why these didn't work for me. And that's probably what will keep the OP from getting them as well if he's got 1.2TB of data. While it may fit now you'll be soon looking for something else in the future once you pass that mark.

You can always use multiple libraries. Going to tape is really the way to go. It facilitates better off site storage with less risk than off site storage of hard drives.

 

[archivalbackup]

We got rid of tapes about 5 years ago, and have never looked back.

We run a few 'tera' servers with 16x1TB disk arrays. Being able to access the backup libraries from home with out needing to come in and plug tapes is a lifesaver.

 

[Dan_D]

We got rid of tapes about 5 years ago, and have never looked back.

We run a few 'tera' servers with 16x1TB disk arrays. Being able to access the backup libraries from home with out needing to come in and plug tapes is a lifesaver.

Yeah there are certainly upsides to doing things that way but data backups are all about mitigating risks. I think that tape or some other form of offline storage does this best. The fact is that online hard drives and backup servers storing them are still subject to data corruption and viruses. Offline storage is less likely to get corrupt due to less access, and as long as the data is checked prior to going to tape it will remain virus free. The storage is cheaper with tapes and there is less risk moving tapes offsite compared to hard drives even if you wanted to store hard drives at Iron mountain or some place like that.

 

[archivalbackup]

Yeah there are certainly upsides to doing things that way but data backups are all about mitigating risks. I think that tape or some other form of offline storage does this best. The fact is that online hard drives and backup servers storing them are still subject to data corruption and viruses. Offline storage is less likely to get corrupt due to less access, and as long as the data is checked prior to going to tape it will remain virus free. The storage is cheaper with tapes and there is less risk moving tapes offsite compared to hard drives even if you wanted to store hard drives at Iron mountain or some place like that.

True, but the trade off in our calculation is worth it. We have one of these servers 50 miles off site in a nuclear bomb hardened facility for our off site storage. Probably not the best choice for every business, but for us it works.

 

[Dan_D]

True, but the trade off in our calculation is worth it. We have one of these servers 50 miles off site in a nuclear bomb hardened facility for our off site storage. Probably not the best choice for every business, but for us it works.

Nice.

 

[TechieSooner]

You can always use multiple libraries. Going to tape is really the way to go. It facilitates better off site storage with less risk than off site storage of hard drives.

Tapes are more expensive... Much more so when you start going with multiple libraries.
Plus, you've got to shuffle all that stuff offsite. Isn't 1 hard drive a ton easier to move offsite than many tapes just for ONE backup?
Tapes are really just a PITA.

And as others have mentioned, their longevity isn't the greatest. At least with a hard drive the worse you have to do is get a new hard drive.

The fact is that online hard drives and backup servers storing them are still subject to data corruption and viruses.

As for the virus claim, I've never understood that. Viruses can and still do write themselves to tape. It's not like they're active on the hard disk or anything, you've still got to run them for it to do anything. Just like a tape.

As far as corruption, it's all in the logfiles. If you check logfiles you'll know when your hard disk is going bad. And verification of backups is also great as an extra layer of prevention.

and as long as the data is checked prior to going to tape it will remain virus free.

This is again back to the virus thing... You're telling me that the virus just materializes on the hard drive while it's sitting in the vault?
Same theory works for hard drives. As long as the data is checked prior to goign to hard drive it will remain virus free.

The storage is cheaper with tapes and there is less risk moving tapes offsite compared to hard drives even if you wanted to store hard drives at Iron mountain or some place like that.

The per-tape cost might be cheaper, but the entire workings is not.

I would agree that hard drives are much more delicate than tapes though. I'd still take a single hard drive versus a bunch of tapes any day.

 

[Dan_D]

Tapes are more expensive... Much more so when you start going with multiple libraries.
Plus, you've got to shuffle all that stuff offsite. Isn't 1 hard drive a ton easier to move offsite than many tapes just for ONE backup?
Tapes are really just a PITA.

And as others have mentioned, their longevity isn't the greatest. At least with a hard drive the worse you have to do is get a new hard drive.


As for the virus claim, I've never understood that. Viruses can and still do write themselves to tape. It's not like they're active on the hard disk or anything, you've still got to run them for it to do anything. Just like a tape.

As far as corruption, it's all in the logfiles. If you check logfiles you'll know when your hard disk is going bad. And verification of backups is also great as an extra layer of prevention.




This is again back to the virus thing... You're telling me that the virus just materializes on the hard drive while it's sitting in the vault?
Same theory works for hard drives. As long as the data is checked prior to goign to hard drive it will remain virus free.


The per-tape cost might be cheaper, but the entire workings is not.

I would agree that hard drives are much more delicate than tapes though. I'd still take a single hard drive versus a bunch of tapes any day.

Concerning the virus thing, I wasn't talking about having hard drives stored in a vault. I was talking about them being online as your only form of backup. I did mention that in my previous post. Storing hard drives in a vault or offsite is an issue in regard to durability of the hard drive should they be dropped. To do the drive arrays right, you are looking at multiple SAS drives most likely in some form of external enclosure. This isn't going to be cheaper than tape libraries and a decent supply of tapes. Not in all cases anyway.

 

[supergper]

Hard drives aren't the way to go in my opinion. Especially not commercial hard drives like the WD 2TB drives. They do not have the same MTBF rating as their enterprise class counterparts do. They also aren't warrantied as well. Plus the performance of SATA hard drives is abysmal in such usage scenarios. LTO's are actually capable of faster writes than hard drives typically are. If your consumer level WD 2 TB drive shits the bed and you RMA it you'd be lucky to get it back in a week. A Dell Powervault 124T gets a technician to work on it the next business day.



The newer tape drives are actually much faster than you might imagine. The fact that they are linear isn't as big a deal as it once was. Yes tape drives fail after a few years but they are heavily mechanical. This is to be expected. The autoloader the OP is looking at has an operational life time of about 4 to 5 years. He can get more out of it by replacing the tape drive in the autoloader. It is replacable. Beyond that those 2TB drives are NOT enterprise class and I wouldn't trust critical data to them. Tapes are small, relatively cheap and can be stored off site easily and they aren't as prone to damage when dropped. With an 8 slot LTO 3 autoloader the OP can store 3.2TB minimum. This should be sufficient for some time based on his original post. It isn't the cheapest solution but that tape drive combined with Arcserve, Backup Exec, Netbackup, TSM, etc. is the right way to go.



This is true. 600GB of changed data daily is well within what the Powervault 124T can handle. But yes the cost does hurt. They are about $3,000 if I recall correctly.



So? They aren't the right tool for storing enterprise class data.



I'd do weekly backups with daily differentials.



Nor should you. Disks have much more that can go wrong with them than tapes do. I also recommend doing backups to disk first, and then copying to tape. This is useful as it gives you a buffer for more easily accessable local restores. This also provides some redundancy should you get a bad tape. Its rare but it does happen occasionally.



You can always use multiple libraries. Going to tape is really the way to go. It facilitates better off site storage with less risk than off site storage of hard drives.

/thread


Anyone that suggests using hard drives for a backup has no clue what they are talking about and I feel bad for their company/clients. Hard Drives (regardless of class) are not designed for backups, do not lend well to off-site storage, and do not last long when they are being moved around.

The comment about it being easier to move a SINGLE hard drive vs. multiple tapes is just hysterical. You really have your backups on a single drive??? Wow, you have a lot more faith in hard drives then I think even the mfgs have in their own hard drives. Once you start dealing with large environments, and you have several large disk arrays, you will learn how unstable hard drives are. I used to manage a ~150TB SAN and it was not uncommon to have multiple drives fail every day.

D-D-T is completely acceptable and is usually the standard way of doing backups, but to rely on a disk as the final destination for your backups is ludicrous. Saying you use disks for backups goes to show you have no real DR plan in place. I also strongly suggest you do weekly fulls and daily cumulative. To do a monthly full with daily backups in-between could prove to be a nightmare. Trying to do a full restore with 30 days worth of cumulatives what a pita that would be, not to mention time consuming.

 

[TechieSooner]

Concerning the virus thing, I wasn't talking about having hard drives stored in a vault. I was talking about them being online as your only form of backup. I did mention that in my previous post. Storing hard drives in a vault or offsite is an issue in regard to durability of the hard drive should they be dropped. To do the drive arrays right, you are looking at multiple SAS drives most likely in some form of external enclosure. This isn't going to be cheaper than tape libraries and a decent supply of tapes. Not in all cases anyway.

Ahh ok, that makes more sense.

Yea I definitely wouldn't use an online hard disk as a backup, either though.
There's no disaster proof in that method either.

I guess we're still on the same page for the most part

The comment about it being easier to move a SINGLE hard drive vs. multiple tapes is just hysterical. You really have your backups on a single drive???

Where did I ever say ALL of the backups had to be on a SINGLE hard drive?
Either shuffle around a half dozen tapes every day, or a single hard drive. It's as simple as that.

Although it doesn't apply to this situation since 400GB wouldn't be hard to manage with tapes on a daily differential, when you are backing up 1TB or so daily like I am doing, tapes are a major PITA.... I would only consider hard drive. Or, like I actually do, upload offsite.

 

[Asgorath]

/thread


I also strongly suggest you do weekly fulls and daily cumulative. To do a monthly full with daily backups in-between could prove to be a nightmare. Trying to do a full restore with 30 days worth of cumulatives what a pita that would be, not to mention time consuming.

I was talking about a monthly full w/ daily differentials. The next month would do a full plus back up the previous month's differentials...then delete those differentials so the process could start over.

So in the future, if I needed to restore November 22 data, I would pull the November tape and do a restore. Then pull the December tape and do a restore from the November 22 differential file.

This gives me the flexibility of restoring to any date in time. Right now I'm backing up through the month, then doing a full backup at the end of the month. If someone created a file on November 10th, then accidently deleted it on November 21st. The November tape wouldn't have the file. Using my method described above I would see the file was created on the 10th and that it disappeared on the 21st. I would restore from the 21st as it is the most recent version of that file. Finding where the file is on what differential would be the job of BackupExec's catalog of all the backups. You can search through all of them...or browse without actually pulling tapes as long as your BE library (database) is working right.

 

[Dan_D]

I was talking about a monthly full w/ daily differentials. The next month would do a full plus back up the previous month's differentials...then delete those differentials so the process could start over.

So in the future, if I needed to restore November 22 data, I would pull the November tape and do a restore. Then pull the December tape and do a restore from the November 22 differential file.

This gives me the flexibility of restoring to any date in time. Right now I'm backing up through the month, then doing a full backup at the end of the month. If someone created a file on November 10th, then accidently deleted it on November 21st. The November tape wouldn't have the file. Using my method described above I would see the file was created on the 10th and that it disappeared on the 21st. I would restore from the 21st as it is the most recent version of that file. Finding where the file is on what differential would be the job of BackupExec's catalog of all the backups. You can search through all of them...or browse without actually pulling tapes as long as your BE library (database) is working right.

You really should do a weekly full backup. Once a month is too long in between full backups.

 

[supergper]

Although it doesn't apply to this situation since 400GB wouldn't be hard to manage with tapes on a daily differential, when you are backing up 1TB or so daily like I am doing, tapes are a major PITA.... I would only consider hard drive. Or, like I actually do, upload offsite.

Sorry, but as I said, hard drives are not a viable option for a real backup (with a DR plan) solution. I was backing up anywhere from 10-50TB for my daily cumulative backups, 1TB is nothing and is easily managed with tapes. Nothing irks me more than a lazy admin.

 

[supergper]

You really should do a weekly full backup. Once a month is too long in between full backups.

Yep, a monthly of cumulatives leaves far too much room for problems to creep in. Also, say you do your full monthly on the first of every month for the previous month. If you have a serious crash (worse case) on the last day of the month, you now have to get the full from the previous month and ~30 cumulatives to bring you back to that day.

 

[Asgorath]

Yep, a monthly of cumulatives leaves far too much room for problems to creep in. Also, say you do your full monthly on the first of every month for the previous month. If you have a serious crash (worse case) on the last day of the month, you now have to get the full from the previous month and ~30 cumulatives to bring you back to that day.

Why do you guys keep saying cumulatives... aka incrimentals?

I have been saying differentials the whole time.

Differential

A cumulative backup of all changes made since the last full or normal backup, i.e., the differences since the last full backup. The advantage to this is the quicker recovery time, requiring only a full backup and the latest differential backup to restore the system. The disadvantage is that for each day elapsed since the last full backup, more data needs to be backed up, especially if a significant proportion of the data has been changed.

Incremental

A "normal" incremental backup will only back up files that have been changed since the last backup of any type. This provides the quickest means of backup, since it only makes copies of files that have not yet been backed up. For instance, following a full backup on Friday, Monday’s tape will contain only those files changed since Friday. Tuesday’s tape contains only those files changed since Monday, and so on. The downside to this is that in order to perform a full restore, one needs to restore the last full backup first, followed by each of the subsequent incremental backups to the present day in the correct order. Should any one of these backup copies be damaged (particularly the full backup), the restore will be incomplete.

An example of a typical incremental backup command in MS-DOS would be: xcopy c:\source\*.* d:\destination\*.* /s /m

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

That's why these didn't work for me. And that's probably what will keep the OP from getting them as well if he's got 1.2TB of data. While it may fit now you'll be soon looking for something else in the future once you pass that mark.

Yeah..I just suggested because he said he has 600 megs daily..then said it was really more like 400 megs daily. Room to grow for a few years, in another year they'll have larger RD cartridges as larger hard drives come out on the market.

I always do full daily backups, none of that incremental/differential/father/son/uncle junk. Anyone who has had to put a server back together from a pile of incremental tapes..not all of them 100% good...knows the pain in the butt that is.

 

[Dan_D]

Why do you guys keep saying cumulatives... aka incrimentals?

I have been saying differentials the whole time.

Incrementals and differentials are not the same thing. The incremental resets the archive bit. Differentials do not. I prefer differentials to incrementals for that reason.

 

[Asgorath]

Yeah..I just suggested because he said he has 600 megs daily..then said it was really more like 400 megs daily. Room to grow for a few years, in another year they'll have larger RD cartridges as larger hard drives come out on the market.

I always do full daily backups, none of that incremental/differential/father/son/uncle junk. Anyone who has had to put a server back together from a pile of incremental tapes..not all of them 100% good...knows the pain in the butt that is.

How should I archive my tapes so that my creation deletion scenario mentioned above would work?

Item created on Nov 10th. Item deleted on November 21st. Full backups taken daily, but only the end of the month archived. That file cannot be found using your full method.

Ok...new idea.....

Tapes Needed:
Monthly Archive Tape
5 Daily Tapes

To start:
* End of the month, take full backup, reset archive bit
Rotating:
* Weekly Schedule for M-Th with the tapes going home daily and 5 friday tapes (most months only have 4) that go home as you use them and come back the following month beginning. Tapes go in the cabinet at the beginning of the month and are taken home as you go. The next tape necessary is brought in. That way the latest backup is always offsite. Full backup taken daily, no reset archive bit. Differentials taken daily, no reset archive bit. Diffs are backed up with the full backup.
* End of the month, take full backup including diffs, reset archive bit, delete diffs.

This means that at any time you can recover any day of the month from the most current tape if you use differentials.

You can recover the most current form of the file straight off the tape with no problem.

You can recover any day in the past from the previous and current month archive tapes through use of differentials. You can recover the file from the end of that month straight from using that month's tape.

How does that plan sound? Other than the fact there will be 2 daily backup tapes :: rollseyes ::

 

[archivalbackup]

/thread


Anyone that suggests using hard drives for a backup has no clue what they are talking about and I feel bad for their company/clients. Hard Drives (regardless of class) are not designed for backups, do not lend well to off-site storage, and do not last long when they are being moved around.

Not all of us were actually talking about physically moving hard drives, but having an installed pool of storage to backup to. Try managing a virtual environment ... does SRM support tape? nope. Requires SAN based replication for the DR which are hard drives.

I can have a complete DR plan with cold or hot site ready to bring up within a few minutes with no tapes involved. Tape != best practice

 

[Dan_D]

Not all of us were actually talking about physically moving hard drives, but having an installed pool of storage to backup to. Try managing a virtual environment ... does SRM support tape? nope. Requires SAN based replication for the DR which are hard drives.

I can have a complete DR plan with cold or hot site ready to bring up within a few minutes with no tapes involved. Tape != best practice

There are obviously multiple ways to make sure you backup your enviroment and multiple ways a DR plan can succeed. There is no one size fits all method for doing things.

 

[TechieSooner]

Sorry, but as I said, hard drives are not a viable option for a real backup (with a DR plan) solution. I was backing up anywhere from 10-50TB for my daily cumulative backups, 1TB is nothing and is easily managed with tapes. Nothing irks me more than a lazy admin.

If you're backing up 50TB of Data then you aren't going to be shuffling that media around. If you are, you're working harder and not smarter.

With 50GB of Data, tapes are just your backup for local recovery. They ARE NOT disaster recovery. Offsite backup is your disaster recovery.

This is the point you seem to be missing that I'm trying to make.

Incrementals and differentials are not the same thing. The incremental resets the archive bit. Differentials do not. I prefer differentials to incrementals for that reason.

I think that was the OP's point.... supergper keeps suggesting incremental when the OP has consistently stated doing differentials.

Not all of us were actually talking about physically moving hard drives, but having an installed pool of storage to backup to. Try managing a virtual environment ... does SRM support tape? nope. Requires SAN based replication for the DR which are hard drives.

I can have a complete DR plan with cold or hot site ready to bring up within a few minutes with no tapes involved. Tape != best practice

Exactly.
If you are going to keep the media in one location, tape is great.
However if you need to physically move media offsite, carrying dozens of tapes in and out of the office each day is not working smart, again it is working hard.
Hence my suggestion a big hard drive is better solution IMO in that situation. Drawback to that is the fragile nature.

Now once you get above 1TB, no matter what you use, you don't want to be changing all that media out, because at that point you'll be dealing with multiple forms of media. Offsite is the way to go in that situation.

How should I archive my tapes so that my creation deletion scenario mentioned above would work?

I guess the question is whether you are going for a backup/DR solution or a data archiving solution.

 

[Asgorath]

If you're backing up 50TB of Data then you aren't going to be shuffling that media around. If you are, you're working harder and not smarter.

With 50GB of Data, tapes are just your backup for local recovery. They ARE NOT disaster recovery. Offsite backup is your disaster recovery.

This is the point you seem to be missing that I'm trying to make.


I think that was the OP's point.... supergper keeps suggesting incremental when the OP has consistently stated doing differentials.


Exactly.
If you are going to keep the media in one location, tape is great.
However if you need to physically move media offsite, carrying dozens of tapes in and out of the office each day is not working smart, again it is working hard.
Hence my suggestion a big hard drive is better solution IMO in that situation. Drawback to that is the fragile nature.

Now once you get above 1TB, no matter what you use, you don't want to be changing all that media out, because at that point you'll be dealing with multiple forms of media. Offsite is the way to go in that situation.


I guess the question is whether you are going for a backup/DR solution or a data archiving solution.

Data recovery point in time
+ Disaster Recovery

 

[supergper]

If you're backing up 50TB of Data then you aren't going to be shuffling that media around. If you are, you're working harder and not smarter.

With 50GB of Data, tapes are just your backup for local recovery. They ARE NOT disaster recovery. Offsite backup is your disaster recovery.

This is the point you seem to be missing that I'm trying to make.

You don't have much of a clue do you? I said D-D-T is usually the standard. You know what D-D-T is right (you should if you are the backup king you claim to be)? I'll give you a hint:
D=Disk
T=Tape

Also, where did 50GB of data come in to play? Now you're just pulling numbers out of thin air. Beside, the amount of data doesn't make that bug of a difference.

I think that was the OP's point.... supergper keeps suggesting incremental when the OP has consistently stated doing differentials.

Where have I once suggested he do an incremental? I've said the whole time he should be doing cumulative (cumulative=differential)

Exactly.
If you are going to keep the media in one location, tape is great.

Wrong. Infact your suggestion is quite the opposite. I'll leave it at that.

However if you need to physically move media offsite, carrying dozens of tapes in and out of the office each day is not working smart, again it is working hard.
Hence my suggestion a big hard drive is better solution IMO in that situation. Drawback to that is the fragile nature.

Again, D-D-T. :laughing: and putting your backups (be it daily or not) on , from your own words, "a big hard drive", is retarded. To properly implement a D-D-T solution, you should be writing to a raid setup so there is redundancy in place.

Now once you get above 1TB, no matter what you use, you don't want to be changing all that media out, because at that point you'll be dealing with multiple forms of media. Offsite is the way to go in that situation.

huh? I don't care if you backup 1GB or 100TB, you should be sending your weekly fulls offsite in a rotation (4 week rotation is pretty standard so you have one full month of weeklies offsite at any given time) and your monthly fulls offsite for archival (they should not be returned, ever.

Backups are not meant to be cheap, and it's not always the easiest way to do things if you want it done right. Backups are an expense that should be added to the budget every year and it never goes away. This includes tapes, drives, and libraries, etc. I'm not suggesting you replace your library every year, that would be ridiculous, but you should plan on upgrading every couple of years. This way if you have a tape drive crap out on you, you aren't trying to scrounge up some old drive so you can recover some data.

This is the last I'll say on this. Obviously some people do not understand backups and that's fine. It's their ass that gets to explain to the client (or their boss) when they can't recover their data.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

How should I archive my tapes so that my creation deletion scenario mentioned above would work?:

Depends how many cartidges you want to buy..and what else you may run.

But..one scenario...HP bundles some of their CDP software with their RDX drive...I believe you can set it to go back as far as 30 days of file versions..if not further.

 

[Asgorath]

Depends how many cartidges you want to buy..and what else you may run.

But..one scenario...HP bundles some of their CDP software with their RDX drive...I believe you can set it to go back as far as 30 days of file versions..if not further.

Is it better than Symantec Continuous protection server. Feature wise, that software rocks. In practice, for file shares with millions of files, it blows. It'll work, then just randomly crap out on a regular basis. I'm ditching it and just using deltacopy (windows rSync wrapper).

 

[ConfusedYKA]

What about Zenith's BDR: http://www.zenithinfotech.com/bdr_sol.asp

We're actually tossing around buying one of these today. The reviews I have read are pretty good.

 

[TechieSooner]

Also, where did 50GB of data come in to play? Now you're just pulling numbers out of thin air. Beside, the amount of data doesn't make that bug of a difference.

I meant 50TB.

The amount of data makes all the difference in the world.

1GB can be stuck on a single tape drive and taken home.
100TB can't be picked up and moved in and out of the office every day.

Where have I once suggested he do an incremental? I've said the whole time he should be doing cumulative (cumulative=differential)

I don't know what on earth you'd call this:

If you have a serious crash (worse case) on the last day of the month, you now have to get the full from the previous month and ~30 cumulatives to bring you back to that day.

huh? I don't care if you backup 1GB or 100TB, you should be sending your weekly fulls offsite in a rotation (4 week rotation is pretty standard so you have one full month of weeklies offsite at any given time) and your monthly fulls offsite for archival (they should not be returned, ever.

Where the hell did I ever say not to take your media offsite?
Your strawman argument fails.

What about Zenith's BDR: http://www.zenithinfotech.com/bdr_sol.asp

We're actually tossing around buying one of these today. The reviews I have read are pretty good.

I use a similar thing to that, although granted I didn't look into the details.
Backups through the day get uploaded to offsite servers.

The only thing I swap tapes out on is a PITA propriety operating system that doesn't like network locations... It's only one server so not that big of deal.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

What about Zenith's BDR: http://www.zenithinfotech.com/bdr_sol.asp

We're actually tossing around buying one of these today. The reviews I have read are pretty good.

I just saw that in an SMB magazine today.....
I was looking at some HP D2D2500 models earlier..but this Zenith product looks nice. Looking for a backup appliance like this for a client with 5x servers..wanna ditch those stand alone tape drives.

 

[Dan_D]

I just saw that in an SMB magazine today.....
I was looking at some HP D2D2500 models earlier..but this Zenith product looks nice. Looking for a backup appliance like this for a client with 5x servers..wanna ditch those stand alone tape drives.

Stand alone tape drives suck when the backup spans more than one tape.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

Stand alone tape drives suck when the backup spans more than one tape.

Heck yeah..although I was talking about 1x tape drive per server. Arose out of a period of growth..new servers added over a period of a few years.