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Mid-Size Business Tape Library Suggestions?
MPankau asks: "My current company is quickly outgrowing our current tape library and I'm looking for some advice on where to start looking. We backup approximately 12TB of data per night with about 3TB of that going to a disk backup on an EMC Clarion CX600. We're primarily looking for something that will give us some room for growth and be cost effective. What tape formats and library solutions would Slashdot readers recommend? Also, are there any other data backup solutions out there that may be better than tape?"
Seriously. Yes, you could cobble something together with 'tar' (this is afterall Slashdot). You already have EMC gear. Buy more. That's what they DO. Your company does $FOO, EMC does storage. They would buy $FOO from you, since its not what they DO.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
I have a Sony DMS-8400 petabyte storage array. It's about 3 years old and cost $1.2 million new. I'm no longer using it and it's not doing me any good. It seriously holds a full Petabyte of storage, 1000 terabytes. Drop me an email at austad( at ) signal15 dot com if you're intersted.
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What kind of backups are you doing? Incremental or differential? Monthly full backups plus nightly and/or weekly? Knowing which you do and what kind of schedule you run backups on will determine what is the best way to backup essential data as this can dramatically change the way you make your critical backups...
IF you want long term archiving, still need tape.
BUT IF you want weekly, monthly, quarterly, yearly backups then a virtual tape library (VTL) is a better option. For most servers, the change in the dataset is small and gradual so a VTL stores one full compressed back + diffs for incremental/differential/full backups. Also, VTLs look for redundant data across servers; 10 similar linux servers will have the almost identical binaries.
I am currently looking at http://www.datadomain.com/ VTL to replace a 72 slot dual drive LTO 1st gen library.
A VTL costs a bit less than a regular tape library + all the tapes you need but the increased throughput and no more tape handling is what makes it worth it.
0.02cents.
This sig space tolet, reasonable rate.
What ever library you choose. Make it AIT4
Major funding for this message was brought to you by Sony.
LTO is the way to go, it has a current capacity of 400 GB per tape, and is available in autoloaders of all sizes, is made by four manufacturers, and has a roadmap clear through 3.2 TB per tape.
Fellowship 9/11
This is pretty much the only real sofware: Symantec (formerly Veritas) NetBackup Enterprise Server 6 Hardware: Recommend a StorageTek L80 with whatever drives you see fit. And of course a server to match.. recommend Sun Solaris. If you want, I'll set it up for ya :)
(1st sig) If this were a snappy sig, you'd be reading it right now. (2nd sig) I'm a karma whore. >Insert FUD here
Companies like http://www.idealstor.com/ use ejectable hard drives instead of tapes. This has several advantages, including the ability to have backups in native format: just browse to the ejectable shared drive and copy your data. I don't have the stats on the newer tape systems, but last time I checked, the shelf life of a tape is not much more than 18 months. The shelf life of a hard drive is much longer. 400GB hard drives don't run any more than LTO2 tapes, so it doesn't cost more money. From the web site
Idealstor is a complete backup system with ejectable inexpensive IDE ATA disks which are used for backup. Idealstor uses disks like tape, giving the best of both the technologies; Idealstor offers the speed and reliability of disk and the portability of tape. Idealstor offers a backup platform that for the first time outperforms tape drives and libraries in performance, reliability, scalability, ease of use and functionality.
The one drawback is that they haven't yet developed a way to allow one backup job to span multiple disks. However, the last time I checked on this was before my Marine Corps reserve unit got activated to come to Iraq, which was June of 2005.
Actually, I'd agree with him for tape devices. Of all the mid-sized tape drives/changes I've ever dealt with, the AIT class has always won, no contest. Although data silos and other high end storage put them to shame in big-data environments, they are certainly not to be looked over in small to mid sized areas. I've ran every thing from DLTs to Travans to drives that aren't even around any more. The DLT drives I run, even with regular cleaning, need the drive replaced every 12-18 months and the tapes are only slightly better. I've taken over AIT2 drives that were a year old, and worked for the next 3. I've since left the company but recently visited and they were still using them. That's 5 years. Same drives. The AIT3 we purchased at that company is now about 3 years old. No problems there, either. I can't wait to start using an ait4. Awesome storage capabilites, excellent speed, good compression, amazingly reliable and not too expensive.
P.S. I also usually passionately dislike Sony.
Umm, thats GB, 800GB. It would be pretty useless at 800MB :)
Absolutely correct :-)
It would be pretty useless at 800MB
I only have 478MB of data to back up, you insensitive clod!
The big three in enterprise-class tape library manufacturers are IBM, StorageTek (now part of Sun), and ADIC. Buy from one of them. Don't waste your time with HP.
My personal favorite are IBM's 3581/2/3/4 line. I've worked with all of them and they have some nice features...partitioning, WWN at the drive slot level rather than the drive, virtual I/O ejects, expandability by stacking on frames, highly-available pickers, multiple pickers for high-use environments, etc. Some of the other vendors are catching up, but that's the key...these are all features IBM had in the 3584 five years ago.
Advice: on VPS providers
What makes me nervous about AIT is my lack of faith in Sony's commitment to the product. The predecessor to AIT, DTF was supposed to be Sony's long-term format, but they changed their minds, making any investments in the old format obsolete. (DTF used gigantic tapes, and Sony was right to change their minds, but that didn't help those with DTF libraries.)
You are tied to Sony drives, and since the form factor is not even close to LTO, DLT or 3590/3592, your selection of libraries is also limited.
SirWired
How much of that data is simple backup, and how much goes off-site for long-term archiving? For on-site backup, Virtual Tape Libraries going to dirt-cheap SATA arrays are becoming rather interesting and useful choices.
For off-site archiving, you really need tape. There are any number of expandable libraries available from any number of vendors. Personally, I am most familiar with the IBM 3584. This can be expanded to a rather large number of drives and slots, and the LTO drives it usually is equipped with are pretty darn solid. (And the 3592 drives you can buy if you have a LOT of money even more so.)
What you REALLY need to pay attention to when building a tape backup solution (which most customers ignore), is environmental and storage conditions, for both your data center and your off-site storage (if any). I think this is a far more important thing to focus on than what brand of library or drive you purchase. Pay VERY close attention to the data sheets for the tapes and drives. Tape can be easily fouled by humidity that is too low (static), or too high (sticking). Same goes with temperature. Stacking the tapes improperly can result in edge tracking issues, which in turn causes little bits of tape to fly around your drive when the drives rollers break them off when shoving the badly-tracked tape at high speeds past the heads.
For software, again, you have a lot of choices. On one hand, you have "traditional" backup applications like Veritas and Legato. These perform your traditional full, differential, etc., backups. On the other end, you have full-fledged data management apps like IBM's TSM. TSM can be a pain to configure, but if done properly, it is very tape efficient, and it has great support for live DB backups, staged backups, file versioning, data expiration (as opposed to mere tape expiration), etc.
Good Luck,
SirWired
If compatible, I would look at something like:8 9.html
http://www.storagetek.com/products/product_page23
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
We backup approximately 12TB of data per night with about 3TB of that going to a disk backup on an EMC Clarion CX600. We're primarily looking for something that will give us some room for growth and be cost effective.
That's a lot to backup and mouthful. This question seems to direct more toward business requirement. If the rate of the backup required excedes and outgrows the rate of revenue gain or loss due to insufficient backup, the risk must come from the management, I think. The backup cost investment variable must be equally or comparably matched against the growth of the business revenue, hence parallelly effective, not negatively affected or wasted against the entity's objectives and investment.
So the $64,000 question, I think, should be, how much cost can your business bare for a backup solution with the rate of your backup requirement in comparison to the rate of your business revenue growth? If $2 million sounds like a drop in the bucket for your mid-size business, the best approach is to find a best solution that fits that amount of investment.
Perhaps the best solution may not be a backup, but more time or less backup or extension of your current backup infrastructure.
"Don't let fools fool you. They are the clever ones."
I disagree strongly.
8 3.html
LTO3 is the way to go: 400 GB native 800 GB compressed.
http://www.lto-technology.com/
Look at the StorageTEK SL-500. The library is modular and can be expanded (up to 500 slots and 15 drives) as you requirements dictate.
http://www.storagetek.com/products/product_page22
I run our company HQ on 5 LTO2 drives in 142 slot library. Weekly full backups about 5 TB. Daily incremental backups take another 3-4 TB per week.
"I'm The Bounty Bear. I will find him anywhere. I'm searching."
Take a look at http://www.falconstor.com/vtl.asp
They produce a VTL appliance that emulates many different libraries and uses (IIRC) your own hardware. You can then attache a library behind it and move tapes off to that as you need (for off site storage).
Regards
James
Ok, Ok, I know dell buys it from someone else, like they buy their fibrechannel SANs from EMC... but, we just bought one of these for the Computer Science department at Virginia Tech. Without the additional library component, it's i think 5U's, and holds 20 or 24 tapes. We are using 400GB/800GB LTO-type tapes. We back up to a gateway SAS (Scsi Attached Storage) array (it's slick - 2U, 12x500GB SATA drives, SCSI320 interfaces in back, manages all raid onboard), and flush from there to tape. We bought 75 tapes, so in theory that's 60TB of storage.
The machine its self keeps track of the tapes - it comes with a set of stick on / color coded bar codes, and it scans the tapes you pop in with a barcode reader.
It's cool. It may not be enough for your setup, but it was only like $50k for the autoloader and tapes.
~W
sig?
How about a UDO Archive Appliance?
It's "tiered" storage combining RAID and Ultra Density Optical 30GB disks (soon to be upgraded to 60BG). There is a range of Archive Appliances going from a few slots to over 600, from one internal UDO drive to about 8 or 10 IIRC.
The idea is, the Appliance appears on your network as conventional Network Attached Storagae using FTP, NFS or SAMBA (the RAID part). You put your files on the RAID and the files are migrated to the UDO disks (two copies) which can then be taken away and archived.
UDO disks are guaranteed to last at least 50 years. UDO2 will double the capacity of the disks to 60BG. They're in a 5.25" cartridge and data is written to both sides.
It has a nice web gui for administration and recovering archived data.
And best of all, it runs Linux :-)
The shelf life may be longer on hard drives, but the chance of the tape surviving the move to the offsite storage facility is way higher.
You might find UDO discs better than both.
Stick Men
Depends on what your discount schedule is I guess..
I know for a fact that it costs me 20% less to buy HP than IBM because of my discount schedule with my reseller. On top of which I also get a great deal on support, 3 year 24x7x6 warranties cost me next to nothing with HP compared with IBM.
Curiosity was framed; ignorance killed the cat. -- Author unknown
No kidding.
We use LTO2 and are looking at LTO3. It's an open standard, unlike the GP's Sony adver^Wsuggestion.
Trolling is a art,
In the Real World, tape is widely used for large scale backups. It stores well for years and has a high GB per dollar.
Tell me, what do they use where you work?
Trolling is a art,
This company Avamar is an archive to disk specialist.
Disclosure: I am a shareholder and former employee. I haven't worked there for 2 years so this info is a little out of date... but they've been improving it susbstantially in that time frame so use this as a baseline.
They are not a disk to disk staging server company like EMC. They focus on data archival on disk... have a system called RAIN (Redundant Array of Inexpensive Nodes.. or Independent Nodes, both are correct) which uses N-Level parity like a RAID array but across server nodes, 4 disk 1 or 2U servers in a rack... which allows for swapping out new nodes on the fly w/o data loss.
Additionally they use an advanced Content Addressed Storage algorithm which does CAS at the byte level instead of the file level tagging your data for date/time/location/backup etc. as well as providing a base for a technique called Commonality Factoring which factors out common data across files before it's ever transferred (happens in the background on the client during scheduled analysis windows) and for many applications, reduces storage and transfer amounts by up to 90%.... meaning you can backup a lot more data to a 1TB system than with standard compression. 3-5 TB of real world data is typical for a 1TB system, which includes all the incrementals you can stand... hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, with checkpoints at any point in time you flag or schedule and a policy management system for deleting incrementals and saving checkpoints permanently.
Their client server architecture allows for remote backups easily and for doing remote mirroring for disaster recovery scenarios. Remote mirroring costs extra, a software plugin called Replicator.
Intel uses Axion (their software) for archiving chipset blueprints. Goldman Sachs uses Axion for storing archived financial and legal data. Visa is using Axion for storing digital versions of checks. Nasa uses Axion for storing signal data from satellites and radio antennaes.
Base system comes in around 40k but call for a demo and sales pitch... they'll bring out a CAT (Commonality Assessment Test) to show you how much of your own data they can archive. The first run will take a day to get a level 0 snapshot, then subsequent backups will take between an hour and 3 hours to do what a tape system will take 12 hours or more to do every single time, even with software like Veritas or EMCs Legato acquired stuff....
They support all standard OS's used in servers and their clients support Windows, Linux, Oracle, MSSQL, Exchange and Solaris. Also they support VTL for use as a backup to your CLARION system which means the server will look like a tape system and can be managed as such....
Finally they do encryption on server, before transmission if required for remote backup. Allow for online access to data 24/7 with full search capabilities and network mapping for mounting a backup directly on your administrative client that looks like a normal filesytem... oh yeah and a web based filebrowser for doing individual or directory sized restores if you just want to grab an archived copy of something small... rather than having to do a full restore w/ all the incremental restores, etc. just to get at one file
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
Yeah, like you can trust a sales representative to give you an honest broad picture of available technical solutions. "Surprise, _our_ products are better than anyone elses!"
You can ask a saleperson to boost their own product or service, or disparage the competitor's products or service, but if you completely rely on them to pick something for you, then you are being incompetent at doing your "due diligence".
I'm not saying that most advice that you get from Slashdot will be much better, but with a broad cross-section of geekdom willing to rant on about their favorite "solutions", if you're willing to sort through the noise, you can at least get a diverse set of leads on product/services/processes to evaluate.
I work for a Fortune 500 company and we're large enough to buy direct from both HP and IBM. HP is always more expensive. The hilarious thing is that on disk, HP is significantly more expensive than Hitachi, when it's the exact same equipment (HP just rebrands Hitachi, e.g. XP1024 = Hitachi 9980, XP12000 = Hitachi Tagma, etc.). We're talking like 20% more. Likewise, Hitachi tape equipment is more expensive than IBM, STK, or ADIC every time I've priced it.
HP has evolved into a white-box reseller...in enterprise computing, they are just packaging other people's products and marking them up.
Advice: on VPS providers
We use AIT3 to backup medical images at the hospital I work at. We have had tons of problems with them. Our AIT2's and DATs have been rock solid though.
Supposedly AIT5's are due out later this year. I think they are supposed to hold 500GB uncompressed.
"He's lost in a 'floyd hole"
We used tape... it failed too many times, media errors/device write errors. We don't want to look at tape again, we use disk to disk, for fast restore, and to portable media for offsite storage. We don't reach 12tb. Btw, I used to work in VIDEO, you want to talk about tape.... and headaches. I would think that already existing technology would have left this in the dust.... We back up with out tape, but maybe 1tb/month. Also, I am not "the" back up guy, and he wants site to site replication next year, with 2 Xserves+Xraids. That will be interesting...
Sig Hansen?
We used to use DLT but there were problems with it. LTO and LTO2 has been fantastic. And moving tapes offsite in case of a disaster can help you sleep better. I do like the xraid, though, very nice stuff.
Trolling is a art,
There are 3 major manufacturers of LTO2 drives: HP, IBM and Quantum. HP actually makes the LTO2 drives in my StorageTEK SL-500. The company we acquired last September also uses STK libraries (L80, L40 and 3 L20's) all of which have HP drives.
"I'm The Bounty Bear. I will find him anywhere. I'm searching."
Uh, the original title of the post was "Mid-Size Business Tape Library Suggestions?" That's what MPankau asked for, and that's what we gave him. All the questions asked are good, but they're only meta to the original question.
"I'm The Bounty Bear. I will find him anywhere. I'm searching."
Having only one measly tape drive that I used for about 2 days before giving up, can I ask the general nerd population why we're still using tapes ? I'd be fine if there were some sort of cost advantage but cheap hard drives have become cheaper than tapes now, and definitely more reliable.
So here's my idea: hard drive libraries! Since SATA drives have a standardized connector layout, you could simply have a backplane and swap drives in and out as if they were tapes. As a bonus you'd get much faster read/write speeds and random access (if desired). Maybe design a cheap plastic enclosure to protect the drive and simplify robotic handling.. hell, build a cartridge that fits a dozen 500gb drives and you have a 6tb slab of cheap fast storage (that's 12tb if you still believe in 2:1 compression).
All we need now is a robotic library that's tailored to hard drives. Should be easy, no ?
-Billco, Fnarg.com
Backup falls across many platforms:
* Desktop : workstations, laptops, pda's
* Servers : per server - NO centralised management
* DataCenter : dedicated console and bells/whistles
To support the above, there are many types of Recovery scenarios:
* Hot Restore : Replicate to a redundant/failover box/server/Cluster/Datacenter
* Warm Restore : Restore capability to same or supported (redundant) hardware
* Cold Restore : lights-out/bare-metal from scratch including alien hardware
And again to tie the two together there are many solutions:
- SAN/Storage replication/sync (typical dump data to tape)
- ILM or tiered storage with tiered retention (archive when necessary)
- Synthetic backups
The problem, IMO, is that the bulk of existing "dump it on tape" apps facilitate "operational" failures NOT disasters. Most shops concentrate on ensuring (sometimes regulatory) data integrity but the restoration capacity should be the focus. In an SMB scenario, you cannot always guarantee the same hardware to facilitate a complete bare-metal restore. Locking data in a box/tape is of fuck all use when the keys are 100ft under water/slag/Cheney etc.
Your question prompts further ones from me:
- Does your backup app support removing the hardware dependance?
- Is your storage virtualised?
- Can your storage snapshot/replicate?
- Are your servers virtual?
- Do you _really_ generate those deltas?
- Can you improve the delta or data-sync efficiency?
- Can you emulate a full?
What i'm getting at here, is that SMBs cannot afford to just backup and be done, SMBs encounter failure rates higher that the FortuneX guys, accommodate that first rather than a straight performance/media benchmark.
We have an STK SL8500 loaded with various drives. For a medium-sized shop (12TB is quite a volume for a medium shop, btw) I would definitely recommend and L700 and a couple LTO3 drives. You can always connect a second library now or later. They have a new product, the L1400 that comes pre-configured with ACSLS built-in... might save you some time and energy if you have to mix backup environments.
--D
We have on the shelf now a Adic Fastor with an IBM? mechanism, this is the 3rd one we have had in 3 years, all broke before the warranty was up, the only good luck we had with them. We have plenty of offsite plans in place, I had all the system back ups at my place, I live only a 10 min bike ride from work... very handy. My boss has all the old tapes... Just in case.
Hey Grub, thanks for being civil, unlike all the other jack-offs that could only spout their superiour supposed knowledge
~ stuff like "you twat" etc how enlightening and informative, thanks... and fuck off! I'm glaaaad I don't work with sorry asses like you lot...
Sig Hansen?
I do have superior knowledge. I'm just wasting my time in talking to you.. Oh wait.. no sorry...
Trolling is a art,
what is your backup window?
how long do you want to keep the data around?
how much does the data change?
I'd be happy to give you some suggstions, butthose are the questions that need to be answered.
Backup to disk isn't much good if you'reconsidering LTO3. It's faster tham most disk. it only helps with restore latency.
I manage backups for about 300TB of data (mostly oracle, some file server). I'd be happy to through you some suggestions for free, or do a more formal proposal if your management likes that kind of thing. Shoot me an email.
"We are not tolerant people. We prefer drastically effective solutions"