What do you use?

[Scott Mitchell]

On Wed, Dec 31, 2003 at 03:13:43PM -0800, Sean Hafeez wrote:
> ok, how about something that works. 100gb?
> 

IME, DLT works well and is pretty reliable.  No tape backup solution is
ever 'cheap', but DLT has been around long enough, and superseded by enough
new technologies (LTO, AIT, etc,...) that it's certainyl at the less
expensive end of the spectrum.  40GB (~80GB compressed) per tape.  We use
an 8-tape changer that usually holds enough for a week's worth of backups.
Any old DLT drive should work with FreeBSD, although you'll need a SCSI
adapter to attach it to.

I'd second the idea of a separate staging disk for backups, especially if
(like us) you're forced to use Windows software to actually put the backups
on the tape.  We have a 250GB drive that the nightly dumps from various
UNIX RAIDs go to - the tape system can then just pick up a few files via
Samba, at its leisure.  We can fit 1-2 weeks of compressed dumps on the
staging disk, so we rarely have to go to tape for restores, plus we no
longer have to use the (lame, slow, broken) Veritas UNIX Agent to back up
the UNIX systems.

As for RAID, we use Vinum, but only because I inherited a bunch of machines
with hot-swap SCSI bays and no hardware RAID.  It works well, once you have
it set up, and I've even managed to swap out failed drives without a reboot
:-)  I'll definitely investigate the 3ware cards when I need to build a new
RAID server, though.

Cheers,

	Scott

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