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Enterprise Backup Solutions

Scarpozzi

Scarpozzi

Lifer
I'm trying to spec out a new LTO tape library.

The typical hardware vendors I've used offer a few models...some scale really well, but are very expensive. Because of the investment costs, I'm looking at the problem 2 different ways...either buying a replacement unit (same model I have) or buying multiple smaller units. The current library I have is a mix of 10 LTO3/LTO4 drives and maybe 200 slots. It's overkill for slots, but not for drives because of the slow LTO3/4 write speeds.

Requirements:
60-70TB of data backed up weekly to be shipped offsite.
(nightly differentials of a few TB)

I want LTO6 for the write speed to shrink the backup window. As far as slot capacity, I need quite a bit so I can have room to grow if I get stuck not having money to upgrade. When you run out of available media, that's pretty bad....I'd like to avoid it.

What vendors are changing the game these days? Are there any I should totally avoid? I purposefully didn't mention who I'm using or considering. I'd like to see what other storage gurus/managers are doing.
 
wow that's a lot of tapes to be labeling
Have you thought about disk based backups just to ease up on the backup window
or the just as important restore time?
 
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NetBackup is the software.



KillerBee said:
wow that's a lot of tapes to be labeling
Have you thought about disk based backups just to ease up on the backup window
or the just as important restore time?
Click to expand...
I used to label the tapes with crayon, but switched to barcodes. Disk inventories are controlled via data sets and tapes are automatically picked by the robot to keep backup sets together. It's typical for backup software to operate this way. When you order LTO or SDLT tapes, you can have them prelabelled or have them ship you a sheet of barcodes starting with whatever number you want.

I'm doing backup to disk for the larger mounts, then copying the data to disk out of the backup window. I'm using some deduplication and backup tiering.

Restores are handled via snapshots where possible and tape restores are scheduled if older versions aren't acceptable, but the most recent tapes are shipped offsite and stored in a vault.
 
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It sounds like an impressive backup system and must be a pretty huge datacenter
got any pics you can share?

I used to backup a mere 30TB? farm using a 16-slot Quantum Superloader
with LTO3 tapes and free Bacula for s/w.

Would love to have had LTO6 back then.

What did you decide to get?
 
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