What do you recommend?

[williaday]

Hi--

I am the only tech support for a part (only 24 users) of a larger organization. We currently have win95 and 98 but are upgrading to win2k in about a week.

We are currently having serious problems with the current back up system (we have a separate system than the organization) (it will back up but it will not read the media), Win NT 4.0 server SP6a, Backup Exec v7.2, Sony DDS4 Tape SDT-11000.

Note that both Veritas and Sony suggested that I upgrade to backup exec 8.6. Which I'm planning on doing, but since I'm about to make that change I was wandering If I should upgrade the server to 2k and should I change the backup hardware from DDS to DLT or AIT? I have a budget of about $5,000 give or take a thou.

Any help will be much appreciated

Thank you,
williaday

 

[bjverzal]

Changing media would impact other things as well.

1. You will need to buy alot more tapes
2. You will need to re-define the tape drive on the backup server
3. You may need to swap out the SCSI Interface on the backup server to support the new drive
4. In addition to upgrading the hardware, when you upgrade the software, if there are any problems - you may be hard pressed to determine if it is hardware or software related.

Do the software first. Let it run for a few weeks. Then do the hardware upgrade.

In addition to DLT and AIT, there is S(uper)DLT, Mammoth-2 and LTO. Your decision should be based on the following criteria:

A. Length of time you have to backup (your "backup window&quot
B. Amount of data to backup
C. Does your disaster recovery vendor support the hardware platform you are moving to
D. Media cost for each platform
E. Software compatibility with the hardware platform

We can't make the choice for you because only you know the answers to these questions. I have expereince with Mammoth-1 (Also known as just "Mammoth&quot, AIT-2, LTO and DLT. DLT is stable. Been around a long time. AIT-3 and LTO are emerging standards. SDLT is new. Mammoth-2 is not too popular as far as I can tell (but some may correct me on this).

My preference would be AIT-2, AIT-3 or LTO.

Hope this helps.

Regards, Bill.

 

[williaday]

Bill-
Thanks for the post.

I will wait until I upgrad Backup Exec to v8.6. Hopefully that will fix the "unable to read media" errors. Then I'll look into the hw upgrade. We currently have 15G to backup, with an anticapted 3G growth each year and the Sony SDT-11000 holds 40G compressed. I think that we will be ok for a while. Hoping that the Sony holds up. In the meanwhile I will look into the other options (AIT-2, AIT-3, etc.).

Thanks again,
williaday

 

[dkediger]

Williaday -

If you're not already doing it, set compression mode off on the tape drive/software. The estimated 15Gb is below the "raw" 20GB capacity of your DDS4 tapes.

I've been using an HP LTO drive for about 8 months with great results.