Re: [opensuse] Tape backup? - slightly OT

a little off-topic but I'm looking into replacing our old DDS4
tape drive which is now too small.
Our choice now looks like LTO, AIT or DLT as our total backup size
is now 80Gb. Has anyone got any good/bad experiences with any of
these technologies? I'm assuming that all will be recognised by
SuSE on our servier which has both SATA and SCSI. What's the
cheapest to buy and run?
We currently use LTO. It works ok - for a tape. As all tapes it is
slow as hell
for recovery case, a LTO media is mechanically robust but can't be
used that often (we change media after 15 backup cycles and already
had rejected tapes).

We have three LTO drives; life cycle of a tape is MUCH MUCH longer than
that.


Next time we need to change backup system we will go to USB/eSATA
disks - one disk for each tape media we currently have in use:
Pro:
- you don't need an expensive tape-drive
- you can already have 1TB per media

You can get 1TB drives?

- you can reuse such a disk much more often then 15 times

Not likely if you are trundling them back and forth between an offsite
backup location. The durability of a caddied drive isn't event remotely
close to that of a magnetic tape. Not even close.

Contra:
- a single media is a bit more expensive
- a disk is not as robust as a tape media

Not even close.

- a disk _may_ not be usable as long as a tape media

It won't be.

- at least 3.5" disks are a little bit bigger then LTO tape media
This is not a solution for a 1000 people company, but for a server
with up to a
terrabyte online storage it is a robust, easy to handle, relatively
cheap and

Not robust. Not easy to handle (*FRAGILE*) and certainly NOT
electromagnetically robust; one good jolt of static electricity and
your backup is fried. Magnetic tape is amazingly resilient.

reliable solution. It may not be a solution if you have to archive
financial
data for your local tax institute - IANAL. But if you "only" have to
deal with important data it is better then most solutions I know about.

--
--
Adam Tauno Williams
Network & Systems Administrator
Consultant - http://www.whitemiceconsulting.com
Developer - http://www.opengroupware.org

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