Legato backup hardware

[mmoga]

We are looking to buy Legato and use a StorageTek L700 tape library for our Unix and NT backup solution.&nbsp;&nbsp;We are looking to both HP and Sun for a server to run 10 DLT 7000 tape drives.&nbsp;&nbsp;Sun is proposing a E4500 list cost $160K and HP is proposing an L2000 list cost $60K.&nbsp;&nbsp;Something is wrong.&nbsp;&nbsp;Is Sun over bidding or is HP under bidding ???&nbsp;&nbsp;Any experience with either would be greatly appreciated.<br><br>Thanks,<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;MM<br>

 

[onslaw]

You have a huge library.&nbsp;&nbsp;The question is, are you planning to backup local data, or data from servers on the network?<br><br>Assuming that you are backup off of a network connection, you would need to consider how much bandwidth you have.&nbsp;&nbsp;Suppose you have a 100 mbps connection.&nbsp;&nbsp;With each DLT7000 drives being able to write at least 5MBps native, and most 10 MBps, you would fill-up the network bandwith with 2 drives (2 drives x 10 Megabytes/s x 8 bits/bytes = 160 mbps).<br><br>Why do you have to consider this?&nbsp;&nbsp;Networker can do parallelism.&nbsp;&nbsp;The more bandwith you have, the more drives you have, the more parallelism you can run, the stronger the server you would need.<br><br>An E4500 is more scalable than the L2000. Plus, Sun support contract is a whole lot cheaper than HP.&nbsp;&nbsp;I would use Sun with Legato, and HP with HP Omniback.

 

[mmoga]

&nbsp;&nbsp;We plan to use Gigabit network to backup the data from other machines.&nbsp;&nbsp;I also would favor Sun since Legato is developed on Sun, but it is difficult to justify spending an additional $100K on scalability.<br>

 

[Guest_imported]

A word of advice,<br><br>Money is usually one (if not the only) criteria that some companies look at when deciding on implementation of technologies. That said, you need to address your goals as an organization.<br><br>What level of data protection to do you require? I assume since you are going with Legato, then you are pretty serious about your backups.<br><br>What is the estimated backup/recover window? If you need lightening fast backups, and fast recoveries, then you'll need to spend the money on Hardware (ie a high powered server, and equally strong storage devices).<br><br>What is the cost associated with downtime to your organization's information? If they are mission critical, then the extra 100K shouldn't be an issue.<br><br>Sounds like the people who are making the decisions, aren't going to be the one's who are going to have deal with the ringing phone when data availability times need to be met.<br><br>Spend the $$$'s now, and you'll be able to relax (somewhat).<br><br>My $0.02<br><br>Helios3