[CentOS] Tape operation

[John R Pierce]

Fajar Priyanto wrote:
> Hi all,
> My only encounter with tape-backup was with Windows 2000. With it, when we 
> backup things using windows' backup tool, it will create a 'catalog', then 
> the catalog contains all the backup operations we do based on date. So, with 
> this we can "append" many backups into one tape. Next time we want to restore 
> a backup, we can choose what date available in that particular tape.
>
> I have zero experience with tape on Linux. I've been googling around and it 
> seems that the backup operation is very different.
>
> For example:
> - The tape is 400GB (LTO-3)
> - The data is only 10GB
>
> Some of the articles I read imply that 1 tape contains 1 backup-file only. 
> CMIIW. This is certainly not very efficient. The commands used are: mt, 
> either tar, cpio.
> ...

I recommend buying some commercial tape backup software..   freeware for 
tape is woefully poor.

common packages include...

    Legato (from EMC)
    Symantec Backup Exec and its big brother NetBackup
    Tivoli StorageManager (from IBM)
    HP DataProtector Express (hoary, but quite robust and cheaper than 
the above)


and there's a bunch of smaller players, like NovaStor, Yosemite, etc

the big ugly with all of these is the tape formats and catalogs are 
generally NOT interchangable.

btw, I would think twice about keeping 40 daily backups on the same 
tape, thats a lot of eggs in one basket.     LTO /is/ quite reliable, 
but still...