Number of Tapes 3

[jhala01]

I had a question about backups. My company uses a Dell 128T Tape Library system, it has an LTO 1 drive and tapes, 100 native/200 compressed per tape. We do about 13 tapes per week, so about 2.6 Terabytes. My cheap company only bought 4 weeks of tapes, so every 5th week we recycle. What do other
companies do? Do other companies just have a whole bunch of tapes? What are the other solutions?

Thanks,
John

 

[NWNinja]

Well, buying more tapes is a obvious option, but also changing the backup schedule and performing fullbackups less frequently should cut down on the tape consumption a bit. Backing up data to disk and only cloning/staging for example the fullbackups and keeping incremental on disk for a few weeks is an option, alltough that is probably more expensive at first since you need to get a Disk Backup license and also a separate disk cabinett. But it will most likely *save* you money in the long run instead of buying more and more tapes. Backup to disk also comes with a sweet performace increase so it might be worth it. That´s my opinion anyway =)

Cheers!
Maverick

 

[jhala01]

Thanks Maverick.

Currently, I do the Full Every Friday schedule, incremental every other day. Yeah, I was forced to do that with the outstanding amount of data coming in. I haven't explored the cloning/staging options yet - probably because it seems that I need a separate tape library system and additional licenses. But I will look into that, thanks. So it seems that larger companies do have a lot of tapes then.

Best Regards,
John

 

[1018DADA]

Tapes are getting cheaper every day, last i heard LTO1 about 20 dollars, you can do better if you buy used one on ebay, so i would do monthend retention for 1 year atleast.

 

[Martin999]

YOu could also adjust the browse period, less indexs then, you can still recover using saveset recoveries.

Martin

 

[1018DADA]

One thing i forgot to mention is using ADV FILE TYPE of Device to backup, you can run all your incrementals to file type device, ( no cost except disk space on NAS or server).
No disk backup licence is required, then you can just backup once a month and keep it offsite for a year.
You can still do one tape backup over the weekend to store offsite in case of DR but you would need to rethink your tape rotation, either way you are compromising in case of DR capabilities.

 

[jhala01]

Thanks everyone.

Martin999 - i have my browse policy and retention policy set to a year for about 40 clients. so if i adjust the browse period, then in the network user console i will be limited to how far back i can see the backed up files. but then you say i can recover a saveset(retention policy) from that period, and that will contain the browse information anyway? Also, how does reducing the browse period affect the size of backups, how can I see the amount of space that is taking up?

1018DADA - thanks, the issue with my environment is that new files get backed up to the NAS everyday and then legato/tape library backs up the NAS. Because of limited space on the NAS, the files get deleted everyday after they are backed up. so doing a full backup once per week and sending it offsite doesn't really help. it seems that my best solution is to just have a boat load of tapes.

 

[Martin999]

All the metadata, client file indexs get backed up to tape - if you reduce the amount you save space.

Amount of space taken up, will have to look into that one ... off the top of my head I don't know.

You will be unable to browse to a certain file - but you could use say :

mminfo -a -q client=servername -r volume,name,savetime,ssid

This would give you a listing of dates, saveset names (eg. /opt) the volume and the saveset id, you can then run a saveset recover.

As mentioned, easier to buy more tapes - always good to have some spares as well. At the end of the day, is saving a few quid on tapes more important than your data???

Martin

 

[Martin999]

Oh, for a given new system we install, we put in enough tapes to allow for at least a years growth. Also, it saves us time as we don't have too many cases of having to manually recycle tapes if a library runs out.

I work for a large company though, so am lucky I guess that the cost of this is not that significant. We have around 340 LTO drives and 17000+ tapes.

M

 

[jhala01]

LOL! That's a lot of backup equipment. Yeah, I have a 128T which has two LTO drives and a total of 52 tapes. I'll push to buy more tapes.

Thanks!
John