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07-30-2011, 04:39 PM
After lots of pondering, I've decided to go with one of Tolis Group's turnkey solutions.
2 more questions though:
- Anyone have good or bad experiences with specific brands of tape? My tape drive will be HP.
- Is there any disadvantage to using compression? Ie reduced transfer speed, taxing of CPU, reduced robustness? By "compression" I'm referring to LTO4's 800GB native/1.6TB compressed capacity.
Taylor
07-30-2011, 10:29 PM
Not too many manufacturers make LTO / Ultrium tapes and they all must be made to certain specs, so you don't have to worry about it too much. I stick with Fuji tapes, they seem to be very good, have proven very reliable and are readily available. Shopping around, even looking for bulk vendors on eBay or elsewhere, I can usually buy them for $20/tape or even a bit less and that includes shipping. My last tape purchase was 40 tapes (two unopened 20-pack cartons) off ebay and after shipping, it came to less than $17/tape.
The BRU kits are a good way to go. They give you everything you need and you don't have to worry about learning what works with what, or what cable you might need if you try to piece a kit together on your own. LTO-5 is more attractive to some right now because it's the newer technology and can fit double the amount of storage on a tape. However, the Ultrium-5 rated tapes are still rather expensive by comparison, more than double the price of LTO-4, so... I don't personally use too many of those, even in my newer LTO-5 unit.
With LTO-4 and BRU, you can plan on about 750GB per tape when archiving most already compressed data like R3D's, AVC, etc.. The HP LTO-4 unit, if you have the desktop half-height 1760, can sustain about 70-75MB/s writes with bursts going up to about 80MB/s. So, given that, it takes about 3 hours to write a tape. Read speeds are similar, but just a touch faster, so if you do a verify pass on your tape set (and you should), it will double that time. LTO-5 is double the speed too, another thing to consider, it writes at about 150MB/s. The full-height LTO-4 18xx model is also faster than the half-height LTO-4 model. IMO, if you're going to spend the extra money, go with an LTO-5 drive over the full height LTO-4.
The compression is mostly worthless, on by default with the hardware. If there are a lot of text files or easily compressible files, it makes a difference. Just leave it on. Most big data doesn't benefit, but you'll know it when it does. No performance penalty for leaving it on.
07-31-2011, 01:37 AM
Jeff is right - For those looking for an all in one solution from BRU, check this link:Originally Posted by Jeff Kilgroe
http://www.productionbackup.com/info...s.php?link=6#6
08-03-2011, 11:06 AM
Great info, thanks for spelling it out so clearly.
Time to pull the trigger on this stuff!
Cheers.
12-31-2011, 09:53 AM
I am now a big fan of Cache-A.
A bit more expensive but well worth it. They come with a nice SSD slot in the back too.
01-03-2012, 07:23 AM
I've been trying to use both 'Retrospect' and 'Bru' but can't make either operate as a reliable method of backing up and restoring from LTO. I've only backed up about 10 tapes and despite the fact that the backup was verified and all OK I can't now restore the media, neither of these bits of software seems to be able to import media that was recorded to LTO in another programme. 'Bru' have apparently diss-continued their LE for MAC, so beware, LTO media might last forever but it can be hard to get at it.
01-05-2012, 06:35 PM
BRU has been working great for me. No issues with restoring data. Also, no backup software can read data that was written by another program. BRU, unlike Retrospect or Mezzo (anybody remember them) allows a version of their restore-only software to be downloaded for free so that nobody needing to restore data is left out in the cold in the even that Tolis goes belly up (like Mezzo did).
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