Tape backups

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Farva

Extremely [H]
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Well, after much consideration, I really need to start doing backups and DVDs just suck in that regard. I really don't want to only burn 4~GB a disk where I can burn 200/400GB relatively cheaply on a tape. Now, I know how to use tapes and I am familiar with Veritas, that's the easy part, now the hard part is finding a proper tape drive. I do not care exactly what kind of tape drive it is, as long as I can backup at least 200GB uncompressed at a time. I am also wondering if there is any difference on brands for tapes.
 
I have not found any inexpensive tape solutions. How much are you looking to spend?
 
phr0ze said:
I have not found any inexpensive tape solutions. How much are you looking to spend?
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Well, for the drive itself, it would be nice for it to be less than $1,000, but if I want to do 400/800 tapes, I know that will be expensive. I was looking at this, but I have no idea what any good products are. 200/400 wouldn't be bad either. I know the Overland ArcVault 12 is just dandy at work, but the unit is over 2,000.

Tapes on Newegg are pretty cheap, $40 for a 200/400 tapes. I use HP tapes where I work, but that is only because that is what I've had to use. I want something that has fairly decent life (2 years).
 
And yes, if the tape drive is SCSI, I would need a SCSI card if the drive does not come with one.
 
I don't have the funds just yet, but I am planning on this either this summer or fall.
 
protias said:
I don't have the funds just yet, but I am planning on this either this summer or fall.
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Ah, ok. Well, the internal ones make it easy, there are internal SATA tape drives that would eliminate your need for a controller (assuming you have an extra SATA port).

But I wouldn't worry too much about the tape size. You probably want the 200GB so that you can backup an entire drive without using multiple tapes, but it's easy. Just do one full, and do a daily incremental. I use ufsdump, works great. Do a level 0 dump every once and a while and do a level 5 dump daily.


If this is a windows box, I wouldn't know what to use, unless you have Veritas.


*SATA Tape drive, these transfer slower than scsi.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16840113018
 
Eickst said:
Ah, ok. Well, the internal ones make it easy, there are internal SATA tape drives that would eliminate your need for a controller (assuming you have an extra SATA port).

But I wouldn't worry too much about the tape size. You probably want the 200GB so that you can backup an entire drive without using multiple tapes, but it's easy. Just do one full, and do a daily incremental. I use ufsdump, works great. Do a level 0 dump every once and a while and do a level 5 dump daily.


If this is a windows box, I wouldn't know what to use, unless you have Veritas.


*SATA Tape drive, these transfer slower than scsi.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16840113018
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That tape drive is one of the many I have saved from newegg. And 200GB for a drive, I have several that are larger than that ;) :p
 
protias said:
That tape drive is one of the many I have saved from newegg. And 200GB for a drive, I have several that are larger than that ;) :p
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Personally, I would go SCSI. I wouldn't worry so much about the tape size, you're going to have about 40-50 of them laying around anyway. A while ago here the tape backups had to be carried out on a furniture dolly the cases were so heavy!! Now it's much easier, but when those 1TB dvd's come out (assuming they don't cost $200 a piece and can be rewritten) it's going to make everyone's life alot easier. Or at least make mine easier.
 
You might also consider finding a deal on an autoloader of a slightly lesser capacity per tape. You will be able to get the tapes much cheaper and with to overall library capacity you will have much more room without manually changing tapes.

I picked up one of these about 6 months ago on eBay

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=290087623460

different seller though and I got mine for $550.00 - the price on the one I linked is retarded, only linked to show the model I picked up for cheap. It holds 9 LTO Ultrium 1 tapes. 100GB native capacity per tape. The loader also has a barcode reader built in so it knows which tape is which. Pretty sweet setup. Figuring at 2:1 compression this thing gives me 1.8TB of backup without manually changing a single tape. The barcode labels are expensive though and they are specific to the type of tape. I did find a place on the web that will mail you a sample sheet of about 33 labels though. ;) I'll have to look them up if you want the link. I ended up getting two dozen "lightly used" tapes on eBay also for right at $200.00. They work just fine and the whole setup works perfect with Veritas Backup Exec... which I also picked up on eBay (version 9 something) for a hundred bucks. Also, while not documented, when you feel the need to expand you can change out the drive in the unit for LTO2 and double it capacity.

EDIT -

This is the place that will send you a free sample sheet of barcode labels specific to the type tapes. These will only be useful if you get an autoloader with a barcode reader though....

http://www.tri-optic.com/requestinfo.aspx
 
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Well, I found a HP SureStore DLT 8000 LVDS. I am having trouble finding information on it. What tapes does it support? What SCSI card do I need to use this autoloader?
 
protias said:
Well, I found a HP SureStore DLT 8000 LVDS. I am having trouble finding information on it. What tapes does it support? What SCSI card do I need to use this autoloader?
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Pretty sure that's a 40/80GB tape drive, and you'll need a SCSI card that does LVD. You might also need a terminator for the drive.

I don't know what kind of connections it has so I can't tell you what kind of cable to use. The tape drive more than likely uses a 68pin high density connector.
 
Eickst said:
Pretty sure that's a 40/80GB tape drive, and you'll need a SCSI card that does LVD. You might also need a terminator for the drive.

I don't know what kind of connections it has so I can't tell you what kind of cable to use. The tape drive more than likely uses a 68pin high density connector.
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I finally did some more digging today. Found this.

Am I reading this right? It holds 360/720 per tape? Or is this overall?
 
So which one are you getting? The single tape drive or the autoloader? They both look like they use 40/80 tapes either way.
 
Eickst said:
So which one are you getting? The single tape drive or the autoloader? They both look like they use 40/80 tapes either way.
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I have an old autoloader from my previous employer. I have 4 holders (whatever they are called) and each one has 6 bays to put in tapes. So if it is 40GB per tape, times 6, that is 240GB per holder. If only one of those goes into the machine at a time, and the above documentation, it would be 60GB tapes (though, that seems like an odd size, and I have not been able to find that size).
 
protias said:
I have an old autoloader from my previous employer. I have 4 holders (whatever they are called) and each one has 6 bays to put in tapes. So if it is 40GB per tape, times 6, that is 240GB per holder. If only one of those goes into the machine at a time, and the above documentation, it would be 60GB tapes (though, that seems like an odd size, and I have not been able to find that size).
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The drive you linked the PDF to is a 9-slot autoloader, with 360GB capacity per magazine. That's 40GB per.
 
That is essentially the exact same as the IBM tape library I bought that I linked up above. It's sold under a few different brands. It is also sold with a few different drive configurations. You will need to be sure what drive it has installed in it as that will affect it's capacity greatly and will determine what type if tapes it will need. They are configured as either LTO Ultrium or DLT. On the LTO side they can have an LTO 1 or an LTO 2 drive installed and probably can put an LTO 3 drive in it. If it's configured as DLT it will have either a DLT IV or a DLT8000 drive in it. LTO will give better performance and higher capacity. I'm not sure if one can be easily converted from DLT to LTO or vice versa.
 
Eickst said:
That's the wrong cable anyway. That card has a VHDCI external, not a HD external.

You'd need this cable

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812193009

VHDCI on the card, HD on the tape drive. It sucks, I know.

Here's a slightly cheaper (and shorter) cable.
http://www.cablestogo.com/product.asp?cat_id=1207&sku=20709
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Thank you very much :)
MixManSC said:
That is essentially the exact same as the IBM tape library I bought that I linked up above. It's sold under a few different brands. It is also sold with a few different drive configurations. You will need to be sure what drive it has installed in it as that will affect it's capacity greatly and will determine what type if tapes it will need. They are configured as either LTO Ultrium or DLT. On the LTO side they can have an LTO 1 or an LTO 2 drive installed and probably can put an LTO 3 drive in it. If it's configured as DLT it will have either a DLT IV or a DLT8000 drive in it. LTO will give better performance and higher capacity. I'm not sure if one can be easily converted from DLT to LTO or vice versa.
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Good to know. I can't wait to finally get this thing up and running.
 
Also make sure to request a "sample" sheet of barcode labels for your tapes once you determine exactly what tapes you will be needing from the link below. They will send you a sheet of 30 barcode labels which the autoloader can read. They are specific to the type of tape though.

http://www.tri-optic.com/requestinfo.aspx
 
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