[CentOS] Re: Planning Mail Server (with low resources)

Aleksandar Milivojevic alex at milivojevic.org
Wed Dec 7 21:17:51 UTC 2005


Quoting Rodrigo Barbosa <rodrigob at suespammers.org>:

> At least around here, a 120G DLT tape costs less than half the price
> of an HD of the same capacity.
>
> Not to mention that tapes are much more reliable, since you can store
> them on appropriate containers/safes.
>
> They also don't have mechanical parts built in, so the they are less
> likely to fail. Of course, I mean good tapes, not the el-cheapo ones.
>
> HDs are not a reliable backup media, and never were.

(Almost) everything I wrote in this thread was from perspective of getting
something done inexpensively.  That is what OP asked in the first 
place. Suggesting a tape drive that costs several thousands of dollars 
(not to mention
prices of autoloaders), and then $50-100 for each tape clearly is not what he
can afford.  There are cheaper drives and tapes (such as 8mm and 4mm), but
those are so unreliable (and not really archival) it is not worth even
considering them.

Clearly, tapes (good tapes such as (S)DLT and LTO) are better for long term
archival storage.  The question is, does OT needs that?  If all he needs is
couple of weeks (or months) worth of backup, and no archiving, RAID-1 or
RAID-10 disk based solution would be way cheaper and easier to maintain.

It does no good to OP if you throw at him solutions fortune 500 company can
afford.  Those are way out of reach for him.  If he wrote "hey, I have this
smoking cluster of brand new dual core Xeons with terrabytes of SAN based
storage".  Sure, I'd suggest some nice backup system.  Remember, he has an
older PIII with 40 gig drive, and obviously no budget for any upgrades of that
system.  I assume when time comes for him to think about backing it up, his
budget ain't gonna be much better (and even if he gets a lot of $$$ for 
backup,
does he really need an expensive smoking tape drive, or will couple of cheap
reduntant hard drives fit the bill).  Well, actually, the time to think about
backing up his email server is right now, before there are any users on 
it.  So
that's way I suggested couple of cheap(er) ways to do it.

>> Anyhow, I always hated
>> people that are shifting responsibility they are paid to handle to
>> somebody who
>> is not supposed to have that responsibility in the first place.
>
> This is enough to show me it would be a waste of time to show the
> flaws on your thinking. If you are looking at it emotionaly,
> it is useless to explain anything to you.

It's not emotional.  It is just what I think about people who choose to 
take the
"screw the users" route.  Nothing emotional about it.  Just bussiness.  
You are
there for the users and because of users.  If there were no users, there
wouldn't be you.  I'm sure not the one suggesting to spend $100,000 (as 
opposed
to $200 and a bit of time to initially setup backup system), for what 
really? Not to have to do something as basic and simple as elementary 
backup?


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