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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Backup and Tape device answers

Hi Jeff, can I ask what software u recommend for lto4?
We are about to start production, we are going to put our footage on a huge raid 5 box, and 2 copies to lto4, we were going to use retrospect, but sounds like that is a bad idea, any input on the best lto4 software to use appreciated.

Edit, oh and we are running vista.

Thanks
Stricko



I have nightmares about any version of Retrospect. I wish it upon all of my enemies.[/QUOTE]
 
15 years ago, RLL, ESDI and 25-pin SCSI were all common drive standards. All would be a real PAIN IN THE ASS if you had to connect one today. Whereas I can put an LTO-1 or LTO-2 tape in my LTO-4 drive and just read it.
Click to expand...

Oh and this just makes me laugh!
Do you know what year this is? The ATA standard was introduced in 1981 a few years later RLL and ESDI were on the way out. Over 20 years later you can still find ATA controller cards and ATA to USB / firewire adapters. You can still find floppy to usb adapters.

The LTO standard was introduced in 2002 so it will be quite a few years before we can compare won't it?http://www.tandbergstorage.com/Market/The-LTO-standard.aspx

Furthermore to compare the failure rate of drives which are used heavily to tapes which are used less often is suspect. Heavily used tapes fail more often than drives which is why most data centers cycle out and destroy them. Mirrored drives treated well will last quite a long time.
 
Let me update my comments about disk versus tape -

What Shooter originally described and I answered was a scenario requiring 16TB of backup capacity. In that scenario, 16TB of LTO-4 tape was almost 1/2 the cost of 16TB of RAID-5 disk. Then, keeping multiple copies of that 16TB of data was weighed and 16TB of LTO-4 tape cost again 1/3 less than 16TB of disks (assuming non-server grade disks) and didn't require the added time of preparing the 16TB RAID-5 array (~50hours). It seems like everyone stuck on the per-disk cost of 1TB drives.

Remember, there's more to backup and archiving than simply "copying" your data to another location.

As for Speed, Unless you're running 4Gb Fibre-Channel to control your disk array, you'll find that LTO-4 over SAS is as fast as a 2Gb or SCSI RAID array at writing data. And, with the proper backup and archival software, restore of a given file or selection of files within the full multi-tape archive can be almost as fast as the disk scenario.

And, for those of you looking to cost, Remember that the US$13K was in comparison to US$22K for a not-quite-the-same disk array (only 13TB available).

For simple needs, LTO3 is a very legitimate answer - around US$1,900 with get you an HP SAS unit and HP SCSI units can be had for around US$1,700. Tandberg DATA units are around US$200 less in each case. You'll still be able to read and write data (with the right software) at around 80MB/sec, so performance is still where it should be.

It's important to keep in mind that LTO devices are backed by the LTO Standards group which includes HP, IBM, Quantum, and Tandberg DATA. These drives are not going away any time soon and the life cycle projection is already mapped out to generation 6 and gen 5 drives are currently entering first-build engineering test.

While "a" disk might be a win over "a" tape, when you start getting into large capacities and long term, multiple archive backups, tape starts to pull out ahead pretty quickly.

Tim
 
brainburst said:
Furthermore to compare the failure rate of drives which are used heavily to tapes which are used less often is suspect. Heavily used tapes fail more often than drives which is why most data centers cycle out and destroy them. Mirrored drives treated well will last quite a long time.
Click to expand...

Let me share that our lab has tapes that have had over 100K passes that are still working as expected (we've been at this since 1988 as a company). These tapes include DAT (1,2,3,4,72, and 160), LTO, and DLT. As for the technology behind the LTO and DLT media (same family tree), it dates back to DEC days in the early 90's, so even though the LTO consortium was formed in 2002, the technology is grounded in much more ancient and proven technologies.

Next, how many mirrored drives are you going to keep around as your digital asset count starts to exceed your disk capacity? Even if you buy cheap, non-server grade, refurbished 1TB disks for US$80, an LTO-4 tape is around US$60-US$70. I can dump 10 LTO-4 tapes into a shoebox and store them in a safe deposit box. The idea of dumping 10 hard drives into a box gives me the creeps :rip_1:.

So, if you're simply looking for 1TB of mirrored storage with no offsite or archival capabilities, look at a high-quality mini-array such as those from G-Technologies. However, if you're exceeding 1TB in the next week's shooting, LTO tape provides a very stable solution that's expandable to almost infinity and at a modest price in relative terms.

After all, it's only your lively hood.

Tim
 
brainburst said:
Oh and this just makes me laugh!
Do you know what year this is? The ATA standard was introduced in 1981 a few years later RLL and ESDI were on the way out.
Click to expand...

So you laugh at that, but you don't laugh when people claim that tape is bad because 10 years from now it could be a problem finding a drive to plug a tape into? Or finding the right software to read the data on that tape? What does ATA have to do with my statement? I was just pointing out that standards come and go. Some day, 40-pin ATA/IDE will be a hard interface to come by, so will SATA. 40-pin IDE/ATA is already being phased out. The point was that trying to justify HDD over tape based on a tape interface becoming obsolete doesn't make sense. That's all I was saying. Anyone with a good backup strategy will realize that all digital archives should be revisited, checked and consolidated to newer and better formats as standards evolve. I was pointing out a flaw in the logic of people denouncing tape, based on whether or not a chosen standard would be accessible in a decade's time.

Over 20 years later you can still find ATA controller cards and ATA to USB / firewire adapters. You can still find floppy to usb adapters.
Click to expand...

Of course you can, that wasn't the point.

Furthermore to compare the failure rate of drives which are used heavily to tapes which are used less often is suspect.
Click to expand...

And you base this on what? Your personal usage?

Heavily used tapes fail more often than drives which is why most data centers cycle out and destroy them. Mirrored drives treated well will last quite a long time.
Click to expand...

HDDs are cycled out and destroyed to.. That was actually one of my job functions when I was employed by EG&G and the US dept. of energy. I'll ask the same of you that I have asked of others. How much do you back up on a weekly or monthly basis? Please explain to me, beyond insurmountable reliability comparisons, how hard drives would make more sense than tape if I'm taking an average of 2.2TB per week, making duplicate back-ups and placing that into long-term archival storage. How would you approach that with an HDD implementation? What about tape? What would be your acceptable failure rates for each and contingency plan if all archives at one storage location are lost? Routinely pulling RAID enclosures off a shelf and spinning them up to maintain the drives is not a realistic practice... It's not possible under HR restraints in many organizations. Nor is swapping drives in and out of RAID enclosures.

If you are assigned the task of migrating half a PB of data from an archive of LTO-1 tapes and you are given the option of HDD or LTO-4. Which would you choose and why? How do you justify to non IT-savvy management your decision if it turns out to be the more expensive route?

I've said it before, I've purchased thousands of hard drives over the years. Still do today. I just bought a carton of 100 Hitachi 1TB drives last week, all will be in service by the end of next week. I store lots of data on drives, tape is not my only backup strategy. I recommend HDD backup for various operations and to various clients where it makes sense. For many, backup to optical media makes perfect sense. For most of us on here, R3D and other media data requirements are too large and optical media is too expensive per GB to be a serious contender.

Hard drives fail. Tapes fail. Optical media fails. It's just the way things are. We can sit here and fantasize about future tech like write-once FLASH and how great it will be once FLASH memory is large enough and cheap enough to be truly used for archival. But that does not solve our problems today... FLASH isn't going to be a serious consideration for my work for a few years to come. For it to be a serious consideration for me to move away from LTO-4, and HDDs to a lesser degree, it will have to provide superior reliability at the equivalent cost per TB and will have to occupy less physical space. Right now, saying FLASH along with terabyte is like talking about mining silver on the moon. It will happen. When it does, it will seem like it got here fast. But that doesn't help us right now.

You can dissect it any way you want. Hard drives are not designed to sit idle on a shelf. Tapes are not meant to be used as regularly. Both are based on frail magnetic coatings on plastic or metallic/ ceramic substrates. Both have moving parts and are susceptible to a variety of environmental hazards. Pick your poison... Have back-ups of your back-ups and you should be fine.
 
I am looking for a software that can drive my LTO-3 (SCSI) on PC and MAC
Any recommendations?

BTW
What made me get the LTO is two 1T Seagate drives that failed on me within one week.
I got them from a very well known supplier, who admitted that there was a batch mistreated during the transport...
lesson learned:)

Thank you
 
I'm looking for software to run a new LTO-3 or LTO-4 (probably HP Ultrium) connected to my PowerPC G5 running OS X 10.5 Leopard Server. I had been planning on Retrospect, but with the comments I'm hearing and the cost of the workgroup version (to run on OS X Server), I'm wondering if there are other, cheaper options?
 
Okay Tim AND Jeff. I think you guys have convinced me. So what are your specific recommendations for a reasonably priced LTO-4 and media?

Would something like this suffice? $2,412 on Amazon with Free Shipping and No Sales Tax.

Quantum TC-L42AN-EY LTO Ultrium 4 Tape Drive - LTO-4 - 800GB (Native)/1.6TB (Compressed) - SAS - 5.25" 1/2H Internal
http://www.amazon.com/Quantum-TC-L4...1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1232686590&sr=8-1

And how about this media? $52.07 ea. on Amazon.

FUJIFILM - LTO Ultrium 4 - 800 GB / 1.6 TB - storage media
http://www.amazon.com/FUJIFILM-LTO-...1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1232686855&sr=1-1

Let me know,

-shooter
 
WORM tapes are also used for long term archives in LTO devices. I think these are recomended for libraries. They are obviously one write pass only. Any views on this ?

thanks,

Dave
 
shooter said:
Okay Tim AND Jeff. I think you guys have convinced me. So what are your specific recommendations for a reasonably priced LTO-4 and media?

Would something like this suffice? $2,412 on Amazon with Free Shipping and No Sales Tax.
Click to expand...

That's an internal drive and the price isn't very good. What system will you be connecting this to? Mac / PC? For about $90 less you can get the external desktop version of that drive, complete with LSI PCIe host controller and 1.5m cable, cleaning tape and one blank LTO-4 tape.

http://www.provantage.com/quantum-tc-l42bn-ez~7QUAT08E.htm

Be careful if you go with the Quantum kit, which kit you actually buy. The TC-L42BN-EZ kit includes the HBA. The TC-L42BN-EY kit does not and often, the EY kit is actually more expensive???

If you want a better drive, take a look at the HP 1760. Here's a pretty good price on it: http://www.provantage.com/hewlett-packard-hp-eh920sb~7HPP90UL.htm ProVantage is a good place to buy, I've dealt with them on a few occasions and this is where I bought my Quantum LTO-4 kit. The HP drive is nicer, but you will have to buy the HBA and cable separately. For this, I recommend an ATTO controller, I think the ATTO 3880 SAS HBA is the one you want.

And how about this media? $52.07 ea. on Amazon.

FUJIFILM - LTO Ultrium 4 - 800 GB / 1.6 TB - storage media
http://www.amazon.com/FUJIFILM-LTO-...1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1232686855&sr=1-1
Click to expand...

That is a good price for individual media. I'm paying about $50ea. buying 25 packs. I haven't used the Fuji ones though, but I would imagine they are just fine.
 
brainburst said:
Oh and this just makes me laugh!
The LTO standard was introduced in 2002 so it will be quite a few years before we can compare won't it?http://www.tandbergstorage.com/Market/The-LTO-standard.aspx
.
Click to expand...

I believe this in quite incorrect, Ultrium was mooted before this and at least started shipping by vendors such as Storagetek in early 1999+ as Ultrium LTO (version 1). The origonal LTO (LINEAR TAPE ORGANISATION) was set up way before an was IBM, HP and Seagate (?)

ANd you can still read this tape media with subsequqnt Ultrium LTO2+ tape drives (NOT LTO3A!))
 
Ah! My plan for world tape domination is taking seed - bwahahah :alien: !

shooter said:
Quantum TC-L42AN-EY LTO Ultrium 4 Tape Drive - LTO-4 - 800GB (Native)/1.6TB (Compressed) - SAS - 5.25" 1/2H Internal
http://www.amazon.com/Quantum-TC-L4...1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1232686590&sr=8-1
Click to expand...
While I know that Quantum's been around for a while, I'd strongly urge you to consider HP or Tandberg Data if you're going to go with SAS. The pricing should be very similar. There are serious issue with Quantum LTO, SAS, and Mac. Additionally, they're not very fond of supporting Mac users.

shooter said:
And how about this media? $52.07 ea. on Amazon.

FUJIFILM - LTO Ultrium 4 - 800 GB / 1.6 TB - storage media
http://www.amazon.com/FUJIFILM-LTO-...1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1232686855&sr=1-1
Click to expand...
I strongly recommend FujiFilm media. In fact, while I don't have insider info, but I believe that HP and IBM OEM the Fuji media as their own private labeled media. Imation and Maxell are good alternatives.

Tim
 
Dave Blackham said:
WORM tapes are also used for long term archives in LTO devices. I think these are recommended for libraries. They are obviously one write pass only. Any views on this ?
Click to expand...

I can't speak for other software platforms, but all of the BRU products support WORM media on Mac OS X ( as well as Linux, Solaris, HP-UX, A/IX, IRIX and 9 other more esoteric Unix platforms :) ). And, they'll work fine in the standalone LTO-3 and LTO-4 drives.

The good thing about WORM is the serious nature of its use as an archival media. Once the data is written to the tapes, the only way to "erase" it is to destroy the tape physically.

Tim
 
Thanks again Tim and Jeff. I have all Macs and will be backing up to tape from a fast 6.4TB RAID 5. Which of these drives, PCI cards (if necessary) and software combination will give me the ABSOLUTE fastest transfer/backup speed. I'm willing to pay more for speed.

-shooter
 
albert rudnicki said:
I am looking for a software that can drive my LTO-3 (SCSI) on PC and MAC
Any recommendations?

BTW
What made me get the LTO is two 1T Seagate drives that failed on me within one week.
I got them from a very well known supplier, who admitted that there was a batch mistreated during the transport...
lesson learned:)

Thank you
Click to expand...

Hi Albert, yes an unfortunate although good lesson learned as you move forward with maintaining your precious essence.

Well done no the LTO3 Ultrium.

I use Tolisgroup BRU-PE (beta) on a MAC OSX PLATFORM.. plenty of posts on the RED and DVX forums on this. It runs natively and is geared up it seems for single user OSX  MAC so you don't need a linux or, solaris or windah's server for your tape drives.

Really - stay away from EMC's retrospect™ if you can.

hth
W
 
shooter said:
Thanks again Tim and Jeff. I have all Macs and will be backing up to tape from a fast 6.4TB RAID 5. Which of these drives, PCI cards (if necessary) and software combination will give me the ABSOLUTE fastest transfer/backup speed. I'm willing to pay more for speed.

-shooter
Click to expand...

HI shooter, I realised you ask Tim and Jeff, but I'll confirm to you (as I done on many threads) that IF YOU HAVE A CHOICE: on an  MAC PRO you MUST go with this configuration... I have this working fine.

This configuration absolutely works and is the fastest solution at present that works on a  MACPRO:
  • either an Hewlett Packard (HP) LTO4 ULTRIUM SAS desktop tape drive model 1840 (Full height [my favourite]) or the HP 1760 Height desktop sas tape drive. Both work great.
  • HBA: only go with any of the ATTOTECH Expresssas H380 PCI-E (HBA only) in a or the R380 (RAID HBA) x8 or x4 lane slot works great! with external SFF-8088 connectors.. I have the EXPRESSAS R380 with the above HP tape drives + RAID and it screams!

The effective archive and recall data rates of these data tape drives depend basicaly on a few things, mainly (but not entirely) on:
  • the data rates of source (Archive) and target (recall) devices (usually disk) that you are using.
  • the SIZE of the objects you are dealing with. CMF objects made during our creative processes such as R3D mags, P2 card objects etc are usually LARGE objects. Little objects such as typical i.t. files slow down the tape drive. the idea is to have the tape transport to continually moving
  • larger tape data block sizes (bufsize) has a factor. I use 1MB or 2MB with my two HP drives and BRU-PE

Theres a few things you can tweak. Others will have ideas I'm sure.

HARDWARE CONFIGURATION on the OSX PLATFORM for these devices: Additionally you may want to consider further that you will want to perform HARDWARE management/configuration (FIRMWARE FLASHing etc) on these devices as well on your OSX 10.5 platform and not have to rely on other platforms such as native linux solaris or windahs-xp to put frimware on and get info.

In this case the ATTTECH EXPRESSSAS HBA R380 , H380 etc is fully supported on the MAC OSX 10.5 platform by ATTP TECH. HP also have undertaken to formally support MAC OSX as the have done for this DISK arrays in the post areana.

Additionally rumours have it that HP will have a similar tool for the HP tape drives.

Of this is the case then you can administer you HBAs and your tape drive naively on OSX.

For me this is abig thing as I dont have mess (ms) windah's anywhere in my place. (thankfully).

Albeit that LSI Logic SAs3442E-R PCI-E HBA (that I have aso in slot 4 on this macpro) and also attached to it a QUANTUM ULTRIUM TC-L42BN desktop tape drive, I must stress that despite that they work on the MACPRO with some limitations, they also are BOTH UNSUPPORTED ON THE OSX PLATFORM by their vendors.. As an owner of a QUANTUM SAS tape drive, I can tell you that they are very noisy and whine loudly when operating and make a dreadful groaning sound when they are labouring through large objects when they are restoring to disk. No idea why they are so much loader than the HP tape drive I have.. beats me. THe tape drive + LSI HBA works ok but in hindsight and as I repeatedly state that the support from QUANTUM is most dreadful for OSX - consider this too.

Again both QUantum and LSO LOGIC dont support their devices on an OSX MAC pLAtform formally. For such and investment this is bad news for my business.

I too have the former (QUANTUM+LSI 3442e) working with BRU-PE on this MACPRO. I would NOT advise you to go that way because of these and more issues and also a BLOCKSIZE contraint issue wth LSI SAS HBA - larger than 1MB it will lock up you MACPRO cold in an instant!. Search these forums for loads of details.

heres some links on this and other forums with a stack of information on data tape systems for MAC OSX.

http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?t=21284
http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?t=24522
http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?t=17496
http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?t=7556 (very long and detailed thread)
http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?t=23545
http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?t=155693
http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?t=114778&page=2

software: I use TOLISGROUP's BRU.

HTH

w
 
Warwik/Tim/Jeff/Experts,
I got my HP LTO4 1840 yesterday. Unfortunately, my producer has ordered SCSI (EH854A) instead of SAS(EH861A). I had already bought SAS HBA and 8088 cable. I plan to return these and get an Ultra 320 SCSI PCI-X card (http://tekserve.com/products/420/Cards_Adapters/37472).
My only concern is would there be a huge difference in performance/speed in using SCSI compared to SAS based system ? I will be using these with Mac Pro and Bru LE.

Thanks in advance.
Murali
 
HI all,

I'm getting the HP 1760 LTO4, SAS,

I'm wondering if anyone can advise good working software for this on the pc side?

Any help appreciated.

Thanks
Stricko
 
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