Thanks for the feedback guys - it was very handy. <br><br>In our circumstance we had to use a tape system because we have quite a large volume of data spread over multiple servers, also a big big point was the offsite backup stuff and HDDs just dont seem suited as much for that. In the end I decided to setup a raid-1 CentOS server with an LTO-2 tape drive, just checked that everything is in order with modinfo st and cat /proc/scsi/scsi etc ... <br>
<br>The next step which I have just started is configuring "Amanda" - at the moment I am just running amtapetype -f /dev/nst0 to identify media and I guess this takes a while ... oh well, time to slack off for a bit I guess :-)<br>
<br>Richard<br><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Mon, Apr 14, 2008 at 12:13 PM, Robert Postill <<a href="mailto:robertpostill@yahoo.co.uk">robertpostill@yahoo.co.uk</a>> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
<div class="Ih2E3d"><br>
On 12/04/2008, at 4:52 AM, David Bean wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding-left: 1ex;">
Compare the sustained transfer rate of a hard disk to a tape. A modern<br>
Tape such as an LTO4 can outperform an equivalent external hard disk.<br>
One issue is that some combinations of RAID arrays, filesystems and file<br>
usage (lots of small files are bad) cannot provide data quick enough to<br>
keep up with the minimum streaming speed of a tape.<br>
</blockquote></div>
My experience is that LTO4 is capable of keeping up with low-end internal hard disk but if you're backing up any of:<br>
* A SAN/NAS rig<br>
* Fibre Channel drives<br>
*A decent RAID array<br>
*Multpath I/O<br>
you're in bother. For a heavy workload like that you'll need something like a 9840 or T10000 drive. Although expect a rig with that kind of hardware (12 drives, fibre channel interface and 600 or so tapes to start at 100k USD) to be a serious money piece of kit for the kind of company that's got very deep pockets ;) I feel like we're at a point where we just don't have the capacity for the home user or small business/organisation most of us work for any kind of responsible backup. So a couple of hard disks is about the best option you've got.<br>
<br>
Also I'd say (in a quick Linux gloat) that Windows servers (never mind clients) *never* can keep up with Linux/Solaris machines, so all this is moot if you have Windows.<br><font color="#888888">
<br>
Robert</font><div><div></div><div class="Wj3C7c"><br>
<br>
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</div></div></blockquote></div><br><br clear="all"><br>-- <br><br>Regards,<br><br>Richard Bagshaw<br><a href="mailto:richard@bagshaw.co.uk">richard@bagshaw.co.uk</a>