What Tape drive should I get? 1

[surjen]

We are using Win2k server for B/U on a sony 4mm tape using DDS 3 tape on native mode. It takes the whole week for a full B/U two tapes per day (I change in the morning and afternoon)

Supervisor wants either multiple tape drives or tape autoloader. So that We can use the same tapes (DDS 3) and not use third party software.

I want to get a DLT 7 to start new and do a full B/U on thursday nite / friday morning. I need to justify the speed and the overall cost. I know that the tapes are more costly but requires less, and it should be faster on B/U's.

Does anyone eles have any other Ideas?

 

[bjverzal]

Look at LTO, Mammoth-2 or AIT-2/AIT-3.

Bill.

 

[surjen]

Well, our back-up tape and drive is going bad now.....some of the tapes can not be restored.

No I think that they'll spend the extra $$$ for a decent back-up.

I'm want to get an LTO because of speed and we need to back-up about 75-90 GB's. And it's possible to get a Daily Full Back-up (Daily back-up, it's their idea).

If anyone eles has a better idea, please let me know.

 

[bjverzal]

We use LTO to back up a half a terabyte in about 10 hours.

Bill.

 

[covert1]

Speaking from experience

--Avoid Exabtye, they claim huge throughputs but I've never seen them. Asked them to prove it, uhhh, nogo. Bad firmware, uhh, ok you can't restore that stuff.
--If you buy LTO's, go IBM or don't go LTO's
--LTO performance is ~20 MB/s (off my head close ballpark),
So
--Your system may not be able to handle the throughput
LTO's (amoung other fast drives) can give you, make sure you won't be dealing with a network or disk-read bottleneck.
--Your backup software might not be able to take advantage of a 20 MB/s tape write throughput unless it gives you the ability to send multiple data streams to the tape drive. If you have two volumes, and both have the ability to only read from disk at a speed of 10 MB/s, then one data stream at this rate won't take advantage of your hardware investment. An example backup software solution that can take advantage of multiple data streams is Backup Express by Syncsort.

 

[lmaher]

We had been using SDLT, but the unit had to be changed 5 times, we have now given up on SLDT, its a Dell kit, they are reccomending that we go with the "Dell Powervault 110T LTO" drive, does anybody have any experience with this. I have to make sure we make the right decision this time, SDLT was a complete nightmare.
Any input or experience would be appreciated.
Regards
Liam

 

[dkediger]

LTO is great technology and has a proven record. I've been using an HP LTO drive for over a year no glitches.

I'm also using ArcServe2000 in a Win2k environment.

LTO is designed on an UltraSCSI interface, so you will need such a host adapter and disk drives to take advantage of the speed.

 

[surjen]

I deceided to go with the LTO from overland data using Veritas 2000 on a Win2k enviorment.

I called around and managed to talk to some of the repair department staff and asked how often do they see LTO drives in for repair, the majority said it is a fairly new drive in the market (vs DLT)and they really haven't see it in.

Convincing my managers that this was the best way to go became easy when I did some research and showed them how often an LTO tape can be re-used, the speed, and the capacity. Personally have an old DLT 4000 at home, so I deceided to bring it in to show how back ups where done at home. The capacity was the only thing I need to prove so once our source code was backed up on one tape they were very pleased.

Sorry for the long story but through some good research and talking to alot of vendors/manufactures/repair techs/tech support/and SALES people.....yuk! I think I made the best decision for our company.

 

[surjen]

I deceided to go with the LTO from overland data using Veritas 2000 on a Win2k enviorment.

I called around and managed to talk to some of the repair department staff and asked how often do they see LTO drives in for repair, the majority said it is a fairly new drive in the market (vs DLT)and they really haven't see it in.

Convincing my managers that this was the best way to go became easy when I did some research and showed them how often an LTO tape can be re-used, the speed, and the capacity. Personally have an old DLT 4000 at home, so I deceided to bring it in to show how back ups where done at home. The capacity was the only thing I need to prove so once our source code was backed up on one tape they were very pleased.

Sorry for the long story but through some good research and talking to alot of vendors/manufactures/repair techs/tech support/and SALES people.....yuk! I think I made the best
decision for our company.

Thank you everyone for your input, it was very helpfull and it gave me some direction.