[Wylug-help] Tape drive advice

[Gary Stainburn]

On Tuesday 25 Jan 2005 11:41 am, James Holden wrote:
> Gary Stainburn wrote:
> >Hi folks
> >
> >I'm looking to install a 80GB HDD and a tape drive into one of my
> > linux boxes to create a network backup server. The tape drive
> > should have at least 40GB capacity.
> >
> >I've been looking at the stuff available from CCL  -
> >http://www.cclonline.com/product-categories.asp?category_id=148 -
> > and wondered what people's opinions of the various devices are.
>
> Gary,
>
> As you'll have noticed, serious tape drives are:
>
> 1) SCSI
> 2) Expensive
>
> ...so I'm assuming this is for work, right?

Yep sur ee Bob

>
> There are various holy wars still raging of DDS vs DLT vs Whatever,
> but it doesn't really matter what you choose. I have no experience of
> IDE/USB/Whatever drives, only SCSI.

I'm looking at the SCSI ones but have had experience of controllers not
working with Linux. I'm looking at the Adaptec AVA 2904 - Any comments
anyone?

>
> Don't rely on the compression doing what is says it will do. It works
> for MS Office files and sometimes executables, but many things are
> already compressed, eg: gif/jpeg files, OpenOffice.org documents. The
> 2:1 compression is a maximum. You might not get any compression at
> all.

The system I'm currently looking at is NTBackup to a Samba share, then
backup that to tape, so I'm guessing there'll be no compression at all
on the tape.

>
> SCSI tape drives have a fairly standard software interface. Linux
> supports this reasonably well.

I'm now looking at the Certance CDL432 which is a 6 tape auto-loader.
http://www.pcwb.com/servlets/Catalogue?id=(400533)&shop=PCWBD

I'm hoping that from Linux I can select which tape(s) to back up to, so
that I can have a weekly rotation without human intervention.  So far
I've not had much success finding anything on doing this though.

>
> Make sure any SCSI card you buy is suppored.
>
> You'll also need to budget for enough media to do a proper rotation
> schedule, which might typically consist of 20 tapes, eg: (M, Tu, Th,
> F, W1, W2, W3 W4, J, F, M, A M, J, J, A, S, O, N, D). Tapes can be
> expensive, so this could add another 300 quid onto the bill.
>
> Don't forget the cleaning tape.
>
> Store the tapes somewhere sensible - cool, dry, vertical, away from
> monitors and other sources of EMI. Preferably offsite. Don't put too
> much trust in a fire safe.

So, putting them on the window ledge in my office isn't a good idea?

>
>
> There is a variety of free/expensive backup software products. Amanda
> is a good place to start (www.amanda.org).

I'll look into that because the current system of using NTBackup and the
task scheduler ain't working.

>
> James
>

--
Gary Stainburn

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