[CentOS-virt] LTO tape drives and Bacula for Backups?

Wed Feb 10 21:39:49 UTC 2010
Christopher G. Stach II <cgs at ldsys.net>

----- "compdoc" <compdoc at hotrodpc.com> wrote:

> The tape is easily replaceable, without
> having to worry about bad connectors that can plague hot
> swap drive bay equipment. 

I really worry about your staff if you have damaged hot swap anything. How many insertions are they rated for? According to its data sheet, a lower end Tyco/AMP SATA connector measures up against EIA-364-09C (i.e., "Mate and unmated [sic] connector assemblies for 500 cycles at a maximum rate of 200 cycles/hour.") Other relevant forces are on there, and you can read the rest if you're interested here: http://tinyurl.com/ybnacp7 Basically, if you break them, you're doing something wrong or you are buying equipment with counterfeit or excessively substandard parts. I wouldn't consider this to be on the scale of a plague.

> At $45 per tape for 320G of storage, it competes with hard
> drives. In case of tape drive failure, the tapes still work
> with the new drive. And with scsi or sata based tape drives,
> speed is not a problem. 

Plus the cost of the tape drive (~$700), plus time, increased risk (longer backup duration means more risk), deployment flexibility, etc etc etc.

> Combined with disk based network storage, tapes have a place
> in IT.

Yes, archival storage.

-- 
Christopher G. Stach II
http://ldsys.net/~cgs/