John R Pierce wrote:
Aron.Darling@Emulex.Com wrote:
Loader are totally a love/hate relationship. They do make life a lot easier as they do the tape movements for you which can be a tedious thing at times. With a loader or library you can script the entire operation with tar, MTX and MT and let cron do all the work for you. Always look for the OEM rather than buying the name brand equipment, they are most always the same HW and FW with a different model number in it.
otoh, its hard to beat a 3 year warranty and on location support from the same vendor as your server hardware, assuming your a brand name shop in the first place.... hugely reduces finger pointing when there's a complex issue to resolve. with OEM hardware bought on the whitebox market, you're often faced with replace or self-repair option at cost.
Having used a 20 tape library, and suffering through restores with AIT2 tapes taking 10-12 hours per tape, I gave up on them. I went with good old rsync, and built up a 4 TB system to handle backups. Once configured, it's nearly a 100% hands off solution. You can read about what I've done here: http://marks-tech-pages.blogspot.com Works great especially for TBs of data that needs to be backed up every day.
HTH
Mark Schoonover IS Manager American Geotechnical - California, Nevada and Arizona V-> 858.450.4040 F-> 714.685.3909 C-> 858.472.3816 "Eternity is a very long time, especially towards the end." -- Stephen Hawking