Re: Tape/DVD Backup Suggestions?

I used Exabyte tapes for severeal years, very reliable. Sometimes there were
problems with media from different vendors. I usually used 2 tapes for parallel
backup/recover sessions and for fault tolerance. I would backup to harddisks only
in rare cases and I don't user CDs etc. for backups.

Egon

Tony Reina wrote:

> Yes, I'm a little wary of hard disk based systems as my sole backup. I
> prefer something that allows me to have at least 2-3 different media
> backups (e.g. one this week, one last week, and one the week before last).
> Also, I like to be able to take a copy of the media home just because I'm
> paranoid that the lab will burn down or something silly like that ;>)
>
> I've been looking at the Exabyte systems which hold 80G/160G and write at
> about 10G/hour. Anyone have experience with these? How onerous is it to
> look at the table of contents or restore a specific file from these tapes?
>
> -Tony
>
> At 11:35 PM 7/17/02 +0100, strange(at)nsk(dot)yi(dot)org wrote:
> >On Wed, Jul 17, 2002 at 04:48:10PM -0500, Nathan Mueller wrote:
> > > > Are there
> > > > systems like with these features that could handle say 20 Gigs per
> > > > media?
> > >
> > > Where I work we just started using a new disk based backup system that
> > > we wrote in-house. Disk is a little bit cheaper then tape -- plus much
> > > faster. Another bonus is that your compression rate does not depend on
> > > how fast your data is flowing. I'd suggest you buy a few 160GB IDE
> > > drives and just dump your data there. It's faster, easier and you don't
> > > need to change tapes. If you're interested in the source to our system
> > > just let me know.
> >
> >I advise against hard disk based backups:
> >
> >It's not cheap, sure, a tape drive is expensive, but the tapes are quite
> >cheap.
> >
> >The cheapness of the tapes allows you to use several for different
> >backup strategies (weekly and daily incremental and monthly full backup, for
> >example) and to keep older data on saved tapes.
> >
> >It's easier. There are programs like Arkeia (free for one linux server and
> >two clients (win32/linux)), that makes tape and backup management a few
> >clicks (but a read of documentation is still needed). As a side note,
> >Arkeia supports direct dumping and backup from serveral rdbms, postgresql
> >included.
> >
> >It's more reliable. If the backup disk fails, all backup is lost and its
> >substitution an hassle. If a tape breaks you still have the other tapes
> >for last week/day/etc.. Still, a tape drive can fail or a tape can screw
> >the drive, but I haven't heard of anyone to whom that has happened. In
> >hardware world, quality normally comes with an higher price.
> >
> >That being said, I don't have a tape. Too much for my pocket. :)
> >So I made a script that creates, compress, splits and burns backups to
> >cds. I'll made a switch to dvds when the price for dvd recorders drops to
> >EUR 100 and dvd blank discs to EUR 2...
> >
> >Your solution is still a valid one, but more a special case for those
> >without too much $$...
> >
> >Regards,
> >Luciano Rocha
> >
> >--
> >Consciousness: that annoying time between naps.
>
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