Problems with Quantum LTO4 & Retrospect 6.1 on OS X

[warwickt]

BRU-PE and LE

BRU-PE and LE

Well... I restored everything off of the first BRU tape just fine. The second tape verified OK when making it, and seemed to restore fine, but after two separate restore attempts, half the data is corrupt and it's all data from the RAID volume that went down.

At this point, I think BRU needs a bit more testing to know for sure what's going on. However, I'm of the opinion that the backup is corrupt because the drive had already failed, just not catastrophically at the point of making the backup.

I will do some more testing this weekend.

Hi Jeff, yeah that's a bummer. I would concur with your thoughts on the source being corrupt.

I'm using BRU-PE (beta) at present with the verify option on (autoscan option on by default).BRU-PE is native Intel code for the MACs that use intel not PPC like the BRU-LE.

Data rates from a good disk array to my HP ULTRIUM lTO4 tape drive and my ATTO EXPRESSAS R380 HBA are in excess of 103MB/sec-108MB/sec (uncompressed of course) for archive. I'm using DVCPROHD 1080P 110Mbs footage.

The recall from archive speeds are around 100MB/sec or less depending on the content.. small objects slow the tape drive down.

I am using 2MB (2048KB) buffer size (block size). All these available on the CLI for the old BRU-LE too (-s 4096 etc) .

Yu need something fast as the source else the tape drive will slow down. So you need to sustain at least 100MB/sec from the source else the tape drive will slow down and wait.

This this is an excellent storage device for contemporary media formats such as R3D and DVCPROHD etc.

I recall content from the archive all the time. It works well.

I'd advise most readers to always make two instances ofthe material on two seperate tape volumes.

However this would not have helped in your situation. :waaa:

My workflow is an ARCHIVE workflow more than a backup. I use the HP Ultrium tape drive to archive and restore material onto either of my two raids (MAC interbnal and external pROAVIO).

What i'm looking into is a FCP workflow using SQUAREBOX's CATDV as an SME MAM.

I believe Tolisgroup and SQUAREBOX are working together on something. This would be a terrific workflow if this would be possible.

fwiw

w

 

[warwickt]

Lsi 3442e pci-e sas hba

Lsi 3442e pci-e sas hba

OMFG!!! I had a hard drive crash today! Lost a 1TB HDD in a 3-drive internal RAID-0. Bay #4 in my Mac Pro that has the LTO-4 on it. So BRU is getting put to the test here in just a few minutes. I have a current backup with Retrospect that I did sunday night. But the only backup I have of what I've done over the last 2.5 days is on the tapes I've made today with BRU. A few hours ago, I sat down at this system to start testing the recovery of data through BRU and was greeted by notifications from the RAID utility.

Damn, this is surreal.... After a couple hours, I gave up trying to recover the drive and RAID volume. The drive will spin up, but it grinds, it's toast. I replaced it with another and will be restoring from the BRU tapes shortly. Unfreakingbelievable.

Oh yeah, this is still with the Quantum SAS kit -- LTO-4HH table top drive with LSI 3442E PCI-E SAS HBA. BRU LE 30-day trial edition. The RAID volume is alive again, I'll report back once I have a verdict on restoration.

HI Jeff. reading back through this thread I noted you have elected to use an LSI 3442E PCI-E SAS HBA on your MAC pro with the Quantum HH SAS tape drive.

IS this model Quantum desktop/external HH SAS i/F Ultrium LTO 4 tape drive model TC-L42BN-EY?

1. Does this configuration work ok on OSX at 10.5.5 on your mac pro?
2. what slot did you put it in the mac pro (x4 or x8?)
3. the LSI does tape PASSTHRU then it should work ok with QUANTUM HH SA ULTRIUM 4? IS this true?

FWIW, Tolisgroup support and PAige Jones advised me that LSI HBA did not work with Quantum LTO4 SAS I/Face tape drives on OSX.

I'm still waiting for a microcode/firmware fix from Quantum for there 'out of spec' LTO4 tape drive for one of mine that doesn't work now with ATTOtech EXPRESSAS HBAs on OSX. (see http://attotech.com/support/trouble/sas.html ). Frankly I will NEVER again buy anything from Quantum. They are dreadful for support and trully clueless about media and production (except for STORNEXT) and also quite ignorant OSX.

w
HK

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

My Quantum kit is the "LTO-4 HH tape drive tabletop kit SAS HBA bundle, model: TC-L42BN-EZ

It is identical to the TC-L42BN-EY kit except the 'EY kit does not include a SAS cable I think.

It works just fine under OSX 10.5.5
The LSI 3442E is an x8 card, therefore it's installed in an x8 slot.

I had heard that the Quantum + LSI combo was not supported by Tolis Group software. However, I had someone tell me they had just tried it and it seemed to work, so I gave it a shot. Actually, the Quantum LTO-4 HH drive is on their list of supported hardware, but TolisGroup only officially supports Atto and Acard HBA's under OSX. Anyway this drive with the LSI card does seem to work and I will be testing it in greater detail tomorrow.

After losing that 1TB HDD earlier this week, I pulled a 1TB HDD out of a 2-drive CalDigit enclosure and got my array back up so I could restore my data. But I spent all day today re-doing this Mac Pro system. I went ahead and did a clean install of OSX 10.5.5 and cleaned off a lot of crap I don't need. I rebuilt the RAID with 3 new 1.5TB HDDs in a RAID-5 and backed up the new system, I just restored all my data to the new RAID a few minutes ago. I also have an external CalDigit HDPro RAID on this sytem 8x1TB in a RAID-5 and it sustains about 450MB/s. I haven't fully benchmarked the new 3x 1.5TB internall array, but it seems like it's just about as fast and just about as big as the previous 3x1TB, but now with the extra benefits of a RAID-5.

Anyway, I'm going to give BRU another shot tomorrow. Make the same sets of backups and try to restore them to see how it goes.

As for performance, I have found the write speed with Retrospect to be absolutely terrible. It's clear down in the 30MB/s range. Read speed for recall or verify is almost double, but still way lower than what it should be.

With ATempo, there is a few bugs with this hardware combo. ATempo supports the LSI card, but they haven't got around to testing and fine-tuning for the Quantum drive yet. But performance is close to 80MB/s write and 100MB/s reads, but I've had it screw up with drive errors.

In the brief bit I have used BRU LE, I found the speed to be great. I was getting over 100MB/s writes to tape and faster when restoring the data. If the tests work out good, I may contact them about the PE version as it may be a better overall solution and I wouldn't mind testing it out if their beta is still open.

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Having an issue with BRU, but not sure what's causing it or if this is simply the way it works.

BRU is inflating data sizes that are to be written to tape. I didn't notice this last time around as my archive spanned two tapes (about 1.2TB of stuff), it fit without error, so I didn't think much of it. However, when I'm trying to do a new backup now with about 770GB of stuff, BRU is estimating the archive will be nearly 935GB in size. I chalked that up to estimation error last night started the backup and walked away. I return this morning to find BRU sitting there waiting for me to insert another tape after it had already written 800GB to the first tape and it still claimed it had nearly 150GB remaining. ...WTF? Re-checking all the settings, the actual data sizes on the drives, restarting, etc. it still happens. No matter what I attempt to feed it, BRU inflates the on-tape data sizes by about 25%.

Other than this data inflation issue, it works just fine. Files restore fine and to their proper size. It's fast, I'll give it that. Write times are smokin' especially compared to the abysmal performance with Retrospect. I'm getting almost 120MB/s average write to tape, but that is also based on BRU's overinflated numbers. Changing buffer / block sizes don't seem to have an effect on this inflation, nor any other settings I can find to change.

 

[Dave Blackham]

I don't know that the specific issue is. Tollis support is usually very good but mail or phone. I recall that the buffer size and other presets need to be correctly set for LTO and other devices or errors can occur or performance affected. Check under Bru presets this is from the Tollis site

http://knowledgebase.tolisgroup.com/?View=entry&EntryID=56

TO (All Versions):
Required Hardware Timeout Settings:
The following settings are assigned in the Console Preferences panel and are described on page 78 for the Mac Admin Guide and page 43 for the Linux Admin Guide.
SCSI Timeout: 1032
Online Timeout: 300
Eject Timeout: 1024
Needs Eject Timeout: 300
Additional Suggested Buffer Settings:
The following settings are assigned on the Console Device Configuration panel and are described on page 72 for the Mac Admin Guide and page 44 for the Linux Admin Guide.
Tape Block Size: 256Kb
Write Cache Size: 256MB
Note: Please read TOLIS KB article #15 before making any changes to the tape block size.

Dave

 

[Dave Blackham]

Hi Jeff, yeah that's a bummer. I would concur with your thoughts on the source being corrupt.

I'm using BRU-PE (beta) at present with the verify option on (autoscan option on by default).BRU-PE is native Intel code for the MACs that use intel not PPC like the BRU-LE.

Data rates from a good disk array to my HP ULTRIUM lTO4 tape drive and my ATTO EXPRESSAS R380 HBA are in excess of 103MB/sec-108MB/sec (uncompressed of course) for archive. I'm using DVCPROHD 1080P 110Mbs footage.

The recall from archive speeds are around 100MB/sec or less depending on the content.. small objects slow the tape drive down.

I am using 2MB (2048KB) buffer size (block size). All these available on the CLI for the old BRU-LE too (-s 4096 etc) .

Yu need something fast as the source else the tape drive will slow down. So you need to sustain at least 100MB/sec from the source else the tape drive will slow down and wait.

This this is an excellent storage device for contemporary media formats such as R3D and DVCPROHD etc.

I recall content from the archive all the time. It works well.

I'd advise most readers to always make two instances ofthe material on two seperate tape volumes.

However this would not have helped in your situation. :waaa:

My workflow is an ARCHIVE workflow more than a backup. I use the HP Ultrium tape drive to archive and restore material onto either of my two raids (MAC interbnal and external pROAVIO).

What i'm looking into is a FCP workflow using SQUAREBOX's CATDV as an SME MAM.

I believe Tolisgroup and SQUAREBOX are working together on something. This would be a terrific workflow if this would be possible.

fwiw

w

Squarebox, DAX and Tollis have an offering and it works better than anything else I know.

Info is on the DAX site if interested.

Dave

 

[Brian Timmons]

For a Quick Update.

I just got an email from my rep at Tekserve concerning this issue.
He states that the Retrospect techs recommend the LSI 3442e card as the one to use with the Quantum LTO4 SAS drive. Sounds like Jeff Kilgroe may have had a point.

I should be receiving the new card soon.

I'll followup shortly.

Brian

I received my replacement LSI3442E and installed it to see if this
would fix the "hang" issues. Unfortunately the problems persist.

Through my dealer, Tekserve, I am now in touch with an engineer from EMC Insginia to see if they can troubleshoot the problem.

Part of me want's to ditch both this Quantum drive and Retrospect while the other part want's to play ball and see if a solution can be found. The latter is winning so far.

I'm in the process of duplicating the problem with a log file attached that has a record of all scsi bus activity. We'll see if this helps. Meanwhile I have other shoots to deal with and the dilemma of a lot of footage stored on hard drives.

If no solution is found in the next week, I'm demanding an HP LTO and BRU as this is affecting my business.

Brian

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Sorry you're having troubles, Brian...

I'm wondering if you may have a faulty LTO unit and/or cable. Have you tried different cables?

As for me here, I'm dumping Retrospect 6.x. BRU is working fine for me in my latest tests. The over-inflation was caused by a block size mismatch and I didn't understand that I had to re-launch BRU with the proper command line or update profile entries before launching, I was trying to change them from the tapectl interface while BRU was active.

FWIW, I almost bought the HP StorageWorks LTO-4 1760 SAS unit and was deciding between the LSI and ATTO SAS HBAs. But at the time, I couldn't get anyone to confirm that the HP drive worked with their software on OSX and it was $1100 more than the Quantum kit by the time I bought the HP drive and a separate HBA.

Tolisgroup is kinda funny when it comes to OSX... Because of business alliances and politics, they only test and recommend ATTO and Acard HBAs. The Quantum LTO-4 HH drive is supported, but not fully tested. Anyway, it seems to be working just fine once I entered the proper parameters.

 

[Brian Timmons]

Hey Jeff,

I'm very glad to hear that things are working well with BRU.

I have tried different cables but still have the same problems.
I appreciate the help Retrospect engineers are giving to this problem but I am not a big fan of their software.
While Quantum tried to be helpful, they don't provide much support for Mac users. In fact they essentially wanted me to find a PC to install the drive on to see if it works.
I'm shuttling data around hard drives to buy time.
I wonder if the firmware on the drive might be an issue. Again hard to update since Quantum's tools only allow one to update the firmware on a PC.

I hope to hear from Retrospect engineers shortly.

Brian

 

[warwickt]

My Quantum kit is the "LTO-4 HH tape drive tabletop kit SAS HBA bundle, model: TC-L42BN-EZ

It is identical to the TC-L42BN-EY kit except the 'EY kit does not include a SAS cable I think.

It works just fine under OSX 10.5.5
The LSI 3442E is an x8 card, therefore it's installed in an x8 slot

.

Hi Jeff, many thanks for the confirmation. I hoping this was the case. I am anxiously awaiting the same LSI HBA from NEXTWAREHOUSE in us&A. Sadly I can't find/source the LSI SAS HBA anywhere here in Hong Kong. The LSI Logic company is a bit useless in the international distributerships like this.

At this stage since firmware changes etc, looks hopeful for the Quantum HH SAS drive with OSx & LSI SAS HBA. This is quite encouraging.

As for performance, I have found the write speed with Retrospect to be absolutely terrible. It's clear down in the 30MB/s range. Read speed for recall or verify is almost double, but still way lower than what it should be.[


In the brief bit I have used BRU LE, I found the speed to be great. I was getting over 100MB/s writes to tape and faster when restoring the data. If the tests work out good, I may contact them about the PE version as it may be a better overall solution and I wouldn't mind testing it out if their beta is still open.

Yes.. especially with an Ultrium 4 tape drive which I'v had up to 113MB/sec uncompressed with BRU-PE for archiving using a 2MB blocksize (buffsize). BRU-PE has a list box with these option up tp 2MB now. I think BRU-LE is only 512KB in list box in the UI.

BRU-PE - I suggest you just contact Tolisgroup and ask. They are really helpful people.

warwick

 

[warwickt]

Having an issue with BRU, but not sure what's causing it or if this is simply the way it works.

BRU is inflating data sizes that are to be written to tape. I didn't notice this last time around as my archive spanned two tapes (about 1.2TB of stuff), it fit without error, so I didn't think much of it. However, when I'm trying to do a new backup now with about 770GB of stuff, BRU is estimating the archive will be nearly 935GB in size. I chalked that up to estimation error last night started the backup and walked away. I return this morning to find BRU sitting there waiting for me to insert another tape after it had already written 800GB to the first tape and it still claimed it had nearly 150GB remaining. ...WTF? Re-checking all the settings, the actual data sizes on the drives, restarting, etc. it still happens. No matter what I attempt to feed it, BRU inflates the on-tape data sizes by about 25%.

HI Jeff, I think this purposeful overhead added by Tolisgroup BRU for their backup/archive for data recovery components. Yes I had 2 x 14GB objects taht I archived and the ARCHIVE size was over 33GB instead of 28GB ! I inquired and was reliably informed by Tolisgroup that this was additional internal constructs that it uses to rebuild any data back form the storage device. In the scheme of things its minimal.

Another issue for consuming tape media (not the former issue) is utilisation of LARGE blocksizes ( 1MB and 2MB [2048KB]) when objects and elements in a file only have say 100KB. This is wasteful I would agree. However in larger picture where LTO4 Ultrium media is as low as $USD30 in some places in volume (for 800GB).. its a very small price to pay I think.

FOR the CMF's we use, large block sizes are wonderful in that they sustain the read and write rate of the tape drive (assuming no disk storage or path latency).

I think BRU handles VB (variable blocksizes) on a volume however they dont recommend it. Seems to work ok for me.

Other than this data inflation issue, it works just fine. Files restore fine and to their proper size. It's fast, I'll give it that. Write times are smokin' especially compared to the abysmal performance with Retrospect. I'm getting almost 120MB/s average write to tape, but that is also based on BRU's overinflated numbers. Changing buffer / block sizes don't seem to have an effect on this inflation, nor any other settings I can find to change.

Datarates: Well I will agree that the numbers reported by BRU seem quite exciting. HOwever the numbers I report are from direct archive and recall BRU-PE tansactions where I WATCH the DISK UTILITY.app on OSX.

There are certainly better ways to measure it however it gives me the sense that the tape drive is working hard, especially when I can hear it going with a constant 'whir" as it moves the tape media for a read and write.

I would suggest you try the BRU-PE CLI and experiment with these:

• blocksizes/bufsize of 1MB, 2MB etc .. { use -b 2048K }
• using material that has BIG objects in it. Assuming all that that an A00x R3D magazine is perfect! (except for the smaller objects)
• that the source and destination storage device (the disk array) is capable of morethan 140MB/sec - thsi is needed to either sustain the read rate of the Utrium SAS tape drive of about 110-120MB/sec uncompressed and also less for WRITE rate (recall)
• mixing the tape drive on the same HBA as the disk array works OK for me. I've experienced no degradation at all
• no need to fiddle around with other tape devices or scsi parameters.. for our purposes these are a waste of time..

Reading and recalling(restoring) back to disk is always slower. I dont know why. I cant tell on OSx... For backup/recovery its not such a big deal but for ARCHIVE/RECALL shaving a few more minutes is helpful.

fwiw

w

 

[warwickt]

Quantum ULtrium LTO4 SAS tape drives and OSX 10.5.5 - use LSI SAS HBA SAS3442E-R

Quantum ULtrium LTO4 SAS tape drives and OSX 10.5.5 - use LSI SAS HBA SAS3442E-R

HI Guys, after several months of sheer frustration with Quantum company in usa HQ and locally (the tape drive guys) for utilising my Quantum HH SAS Ultrium LTO4 tape drive on my MACPRO 10.5.5 system NOT WORKING with ATTO TECH HBA (due to Quantum spec issue), I have purchased an LSI LOGIC LSI SAS3442E-R PCI-E SAS HBA.

ANd the results are very good! :biggrin:

THe purpose of this post reply is to provide some solid and real world COTS and H/W components that you can utilise for a MACPRO for an Ultrium LTO4 data tape drive where you wanna use ONLY MAC/OSX as the HOST.

I will reference this post in some other threads as I believe it is very helpful to this of us wanting to spread our content and business risk over more than unreliable spinning disk.

This solution is for archiving and recalling CMF (contemporary media formats) such as R3D and DVCPROHD etc etc that are very long and possibly complex data formats that are uncompressable by the usual string compressors in data tape drives (aka LZ-1).

Thanks to a post in this thread and reply by Jeff Kilgroe I saw last week, I took delivery of this LSI LOGIC LSI SAS3442E-R PCI-E SAS HBA yesterday and can confirm it works well with only one issue I will detail later in this post. (again I already have an ATTOTECH EXPRSS SAS HBA in this mac).

OK... to doubters and possible non believers this all works fine!

I have TWO different manufacturer model SAS tape drives and TWO different manufacturer model SAS HBAs installed on my MACPRO 8 core at present. One of these HBA's (the ATTOTECH R380) is also connected to a an EXTERNAL RAID.

My configuration at present for the Ultrium LTO4 SAS interfaced data tape drives at present is:

• MACPRO 8 core @ 10.5.5
• a beta version of TOLISGROUP BRU-PE for archive & recall from data tape
• 1 x HP Ultrium LTO4 SAS interface full height desktop tape drive model 1840
• 1 x Quantum Ultrium HH LTO4 SAS interface tape drive external/desktop model TC-L42BN-EY
• 1 x ATTOTECH R380 SAS HBA PCIE
• 1 x LSI LOGIC SAS3442E-R PCIE SAS HBA

Simply, OSX 10.5 does not contain any data tape drivers as far as I know. THere fore you need to have some cool host based software that performs all the SCSI tape directives and error recovery itself. In this case I use TOLISGROUPs BRU-PE (its in BETA TEST at present). BRU-LE works OK too. It is a PPC version I recall.

Here's some quick notes on the READ and WRITE performance of these tape drives and SAS PCIE HBA's on THIS MACPRO using:

• QUICKTIME clips for DVCPROHD at 30-60GB in size
• R3M magazine (80GB) with complex objects A00n with RDC objects of R3D and proxy QUICKTIME movies - average 2-5GB each (all scenes)
• Panno P2 footage sample objects @ 30-60GB with the usual .MXF essence (aud + video), small .bmp images for icons, .xml and other clips data - u get the idea

I think it is important to realise that the performance of the data tape is

• directly related to how fast you can FEED it or pull from it. Thus small objects within files or the small files themsels such as stuff thats under several 100MB will cause the tape drive to slow down.
• the data rate of he tape drive itself
• the BLOCK SIZE of the data blocks usually expressed as BLKSIZE or BUFSIZE . not strictly the same I guess - a data tape large block size on OUR world of content creation works heaps better than a small one. A large block size is 1024KB | 1MB , 2048KB | 2MB or what ever the HBA and tape drive will handle. (see later for glitch with LSI HBA on OSX)
• the data rate of the source and destination of the disk storage. My testing is with an internal and external disk array. Simply a single SATA2 disk DDM (spindle) (<62MB/sec +/-) will NOT sustain the data rate required by the ULtrium LTO4 data tape drives (120MB/sec +/- uncompressed).

the performance summary WORKFLOW data rates I can achieve for archive and recalls in MY configiration using these two tape drives and HBAs are as follows using TolisGRoups BRU-PE software. I did this simply by monitoring with my eyes the /applications utilities/activity monitor.app where the ONLY disk activity was the Tolisgroup BRU-PE. I'm looking into the are range of I/O operations between the two cards..... any ideas are welcome!

ATTOTECH R380 SAS HBA:

HP SAS LTO4 Utrium model 1840: archive (writes from disk to tape) = 104MB/sec & recall (reads from data tape back to disk storage) = 75MB/sec​

Quantum SAS LTO4 Ultrium model TC-L42BN-EY: DOES NOT WORK with ATTOTECH EXPRESSSAS™ HBAs! - refer to ATTO and Quantum sites support​

LSI LOGIC LSI SAS3442E-R SAS HBA:

HP SAS LTO4 Utrium model 1840: archive (writes from disk to tape) = 104MB-108MB/sec & recall (reads from data tape back to disk storage) = 74MB/sec-76MB/sec​

Quantum SAS LTO4 Ultrium model TC-L42BN-EY: archive (writes from disk to tape) = 100MB-103MB/sec & recall (reads from data tape back to disk storage) = 78MB/sec-95MB/sec! ​

WATCHOUT NOTE!: I have experienced a total OUTAGE with I use any of these HP & QUANTUM SAS Ultrium LTO4 tape drives with the LSI LOGIC LSI SAS3442E-R SAS HBA with a tape block size | buffer size greater ( > ) than 1MB | 1024KB.
This does not occur with the ATTOTECH EXPRESSAS HBA (R38) as I have experienced with block sizes to 16MB .. (no performance difference BTW above 2MB!).

With the exception of the Quantum TC-L42BN HH desktop SAS external tape drive being not within the LTO4 specication/SAS (as they reflect some issue in email to me months back)) and the ATTOTECH EXPRESSSAS R380 HBA, I feel these 3 working configurations with TOLISGROUPS BRU-PE (beta) software to the job of archiving and recalling CMF content such as we use, work very well indeed!.

IF I had my time over again I would buy|recommend the HP 1840 Ultrium LTO4 SAS tape drive and any of the ATTOTECH express sas HBAs as this is a solid configuration that works with ANY BLOCKSIZE on this MAC PRO 8 core at 10.5.5 OSX. Besides... the HP drive looks bigger and stornger and is quite a difference less noisier than the QUANTUM drive. As I posted on other threads, Quantums tape drive support is dreadful and borderlines on incompetance... especially where OSX is concerned. HP supports is agnostic and amazing well informed about  OSX!.

Feel free to PM me if you like about this config and components.

HTH

Warwick
Hong Kong

 

[Brian Timmons]

As the person who started this thread over a month ago chronicling my journey with trying to the get the Quantum LTO4 SAS drive working in a Mac environment, I am happy to say that I have a solution.

I traded the Quantum drive in for the HP 1760 LTO4 SAS. I've backed up over 2 TBs with it and BRU Server and it operates quite solidly.

I was in contact with a Retrospect engineer that mentioned that the firmware on the Quantum drive may have needed to be updated to the latest build for it to work reliably.

The build I had (v2086) was definitely kind of old.

Unfortunately, Quantum's support (though polite) is not very good if your not running on Windows. I was basically instructed to find a PC to install the HBA and drive on to and run Quantum's PC only diagnostic tools and driver installer. It also was not a sure thing that this would provide the fix.

While the Quantum drive is nice and slightly faster (I think) than the HP 1760, the HP gets my vote just for working very reliably.

I'm glad to see this thread grow into yet another discussion on the various pros and cons of backup hardware and software.

Thanks for everyone that contributed to this discussion especially Jeff Kilgrow and Warwick for some of the long detailed posts of their experiences.

Now that I have an actual working drive I hope to explore some of the catalog software to use in combination with BRU like CAT DV.

Does anyone (Dave Blackham?) know how much the DAX plug in for Cat DV costs? Any specific experiences, pros&cons, etc. with that set up?

Thanks again.

Brian Timmons
britim media

 

[warwickt]

Hi Brian, your experience with Quantum tape drive support was identical to mine with the exception that the support around the tape more incompetent/ignorant than professional. Maybe I had their GMT+8 support !

for other that are interested.....

I too have (also) the HP LTO4 ULTRIUM 1840 SAS FULL Height and it works extremely works well. I have experimented with blocksizes of 2MB-16MB with the ATTOTECh R380 EXPRESS SAS with BRU-PE (beta) and some improvement at about 4MB with material that is VERY long. Data rates measured with activity monitor.app (read from DISK) and IOSTAT around 115MB/sec uncompressed (not the BRU logs) .. so very impressive.

However for RECALLs (reads) it is under 90MB/sec .. but I can wait.

Also I found the QUANTUM HH sas Ultrium4 tape drive to be slower in reacting to REWIND, SPACE (locate) commands than the HP tape drive. I think it is a case of some sacrifice in the tape transport mechanism for the half height verse the full height? (small is not necessarily good I suppose).

My HP FH is a lot quieter than the quantum LTO4 SAS tape drive bit while it is idle and while it is working. In fact I can tell the difference when one of the other is working as it is reasonably noticeable.

The LSI HBA SAS3442E (As I may have mentioned earlier) with both the quantum Ultrium LTO4 SAS tape drive and also the HP 1840 will instantly lock up the machine if the BLOCKSIZE (buffer size) specified is larger than 1MB (1024KB).

This is not a showstopper but it does not happen with ATTOTECH SAS expresssas and the HP 1840 (which really hums along btw)!.

CATDV: Yeah I just upgraded to V7.0 and am looking for some assimilation between TOLISGROUP and BRU-PE. I have looked at DAX but I think it is a bit unwieldy for my situation and I'm unsure if there is native OSX .app for it (anyone know?).

I would certainly like a transparent workflow using CATDV+FCS+BRU using Ultrium LTO data tape.

IF anyone has experience with R3D mags and also P2 using a data tape archive with FCS and CATDV (squarebox), please post or PM me as I am very interested in getting this going ASAP. I want the MAM capabilities of CATDV looking at the DATA TAPE archived stuff (offline) via the proxies but without it considering it videotape... any ideas?

I guess SANTA Clause may bring this soon :

Thanks for the heads up Brian

w

 

[adrian kerton]

First I will declare my interest as the European Director of European Sales for TOLIS Group.

A number of users are having problems with the Quantum SAS drive, note this does not affect SCSI and Fibre channel drives. See the note on our's and ATTO's website.

BRU Server and BRU LE offer an excellent replacement for Retrospect. Most users will find a significant decrease in backup times and less server loading. NASA entrust their backups to BRU. With recent in-house testing we achieved reading and writing directly from the Xserve RAID, sustaining
over 150MB/sec (527GB/Hour).

30 day demo of our software is available from our website, however if you are a Retrospect user please read the applicable notes on our website.
Thank you, Adrian Kerton

Reading through the posts, I know there are a few users working with the Quantum HH LTO 4 and Retrospect 6.1 on OS X.

I recently set up my own system running on a new 2.8 GHZ Quad Mac Pro.

The software and hardware setup was simple enough and Retrospect backed up the data (A 100GB OS backup) to the Quantum seemingly well but upon verifying the data Retrospect would hang. The program would show about 100% CPU activity but it stopped all activity ( even after over 30 minutes of sitting).

After shutting down and rebooting I later tried to restore the backup only to have Retrospect hang again. Since it seemed to hang on the same file (an illustrator plug-in) I scanned the drive to see if any files were corrupt and Disk Warrior and Techtool Pro. Everything checked out fine.

When I later tried another backup of just the folder that included that Illustrator plug-in; the backup, verify, and restore was successful.

I tried backing up a Final Cut Pro project consisting of DV files, audio and GFX (roughly 650 GB). Again the backing up to tape seemed fine with no errors reported.

Upon trying to either verify or restore the project Retrospect would soon hang. It's interesting that the hang ups would usually occur within the first 1 GB.

Whenever Retrospect would hang the Quantum LTO4 would flash the #8 in it's status window with a blinking light on the left of it. The Quantum manual indicates an interface fault. Not sure what's up there.
The OS (through about this Mac) and Retrospect never seem to have a problem recognizing the drive

I read that Retrospect did not work well with RAM over 3 GBs so I stripped my 10 GBs of Ram down to 2 GB. Problem still occurs.

Been in touch with Quantum and trying to talk with EMC to see if they can help.

Since many users seem to be successful with this setup, can anyone share some insight regarding this problem?

Like any RED user, a reliable backup system is crucial and this problem can really affect my ability to see projects through.

I'm stumped on this one. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Full system specs are below.

Mac OS 10.5.5
2.8 Quad Mac PRO
10 GB
Retrospect 6.1 w/ latest 6.1 Driver Update
LSI SAS 3801E Host Bus Adapter
Quantum LTO 4 HH TC-L42BN-EY (Table top)
Quantum LTO 4 data cartridge

 

[Brian Timmons]

Thanks Adrian. I'm already a convert (placing my order when I'm done with a current shoot). Encouraging to hear about NASA using BRU. Any info regarding the release of BRU PE?

Brian Timmons
britim media

First I will declare my interest as the European Director of European Sales for TOLIS Group.

A number of users are having problems with the Quantum SAS drive, note this does not affect SCSI and Fibre channel drives. See the note on our's and ATTO's website.

BRU Server and BRU LE offer an excellent replacement for Retrospect. Most users will find a significant decrease in backup times and less server loading. NASA entrust their backups to BRU. With recent in-house testing we achieved reading and writing directly from the Xserve RAID, sustaining
over 150MB/sec (527GB/Hour).

30 day demo of our software is available from our website, however if you are a Retrospect user please read the applicable notes on our website.
Thank you, Adrian Kerton

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Thank you for stopping by, Adrian.

I'm a BRU convert now. I am successfully using the Quantum LTO-4 SAS unit w/LSI controller. It seems that reports I have seen here and on other sites related to problems with the Quantum drive point to issues with older firmware. I can not substantiate this myself as mine is running fine.

I have also had some recent experiences with the HP LTO-4 SAS and an ATTO controller and that combination also worked well. I would recommend either solution to OSX users, however I find these manufacturers' lack of direct support for OSX to be quite unsettling. Either drive requires being connected to a Windows system just to upgrade firmware or perform proper diagnostics.

 

[Simon Blackledge]

Just a quick post.

I have been told that Quantum are aware of the issue and now have new firmware in beta that address's these issues and will bring the unit within "spec"

I thought that the issue had reared it's ugly head this week but it appears that its an issue with just one tape. This is tape 1. Which is the tape the unit shipped with "Quantum" branded. All HP tapes restore fine.

The error in Retrospect was the usual dirtyhead/bad media and I was forced to clean the heads even though I had done so after last backup the day before.

I'm looking at retrieving all data and switching to Bru now though.
Although retrospect X id due soon as is the firmware so I think I'll hang on for a while.

Whats the deal with switching to Bru? Did everyone have to restore all data with retrospect then ra-archive with bru ?

Cheers
Simon

 

[ckarcher]

Hi everyone,


We just ordered all of the elements for our backup system:

HP Smart Buy 1/8 G2 1760 SAS Autoloader with 6 tape capacity ( 6.4TB uncompressed capacity)

Atto R380 SAS card

Tolis Bru server ( with 4 client licenses for our systems)

once we get up and running I'll report back. The selection is quite affordable and will work across our network... wireless and gigabit.

I must say the folks at Tolis were extremely helpful. After trying to contact HP for almost an hour, I gave up and called Tolis and they had answers I needed to make a decision. They really seem to have expertise on the hardware integration and their product.

 

[Brian Timmons]

It seems that the TOLIS group is about to release an updated version of BRU Server along with a price increase. If you pick it up now you can purchase it at the current price and receive the upgrade when it's released.
I just ordered my copy just before New Year's.

http://knowledgebase.tolisgroup.com/?View=entry&EntryID=186

Brian Timmons
britim media