LTO-3 _is_ 400GB/800GB. I don't think you'll see drives differing on
that. LTO-2 is half that capacity, and LTO-4 is twice it - they keep a
fairly steady doubling of the capacity in the LTO specs. Whether 400/800
is enough for you may depend on frequency and level of the backups (full
vs. incremental backups).
The problem with LTO-3 and up is that most standalone systems alone
can't keep up with tape drives. If the system can't keep the data fed to
it fast enough to keep the tape moving, it has to stop and start the
tape, which hurts performance further and tends to wear the drive
components faster (the "shoeshining effect"). If the drives are in a
raid array, that might be better. I generally wouldn't recommend it for
a standalone system though.
I have two LTO-3s connected on their own SCSI bus to a dual-core Dell
1950 server with a VTL connected via FibreChannel. Initial backups go to
the VTL, and then they are pushed to one of the tape drives when the
system is idle. I only use one tape at a time, and still the system at
times the tape has to pause. However, the average throughput is still
way faster than LTO-2.
The main problem is that hard disks are growing much faster than tape
capacities. For standalone uses a removable drive unit of some form
would probably be more effective.
Scott Ehrlich wrote:
For a machine with 750 GB x 4 SATA drives (connected to SAS backplane) =
3 TB (roughly), what would be a recommended native/compressed lto3
[half-height] capacity drive to use for backup? This is a standalone
desktop.
I am considering Windows native backup, if that will work with a tape
drive.
Some of what I've seen are 400 GB native / 800 GB compressed. Normally
I'd think that would fill quickly, but with tape drive technology and
software, another part of me thinks it may last longer than I expect. I
look forward to getting educated here.
Thanks.
Scott
_______________________________________________
bblisa mailing list
[email protected]
http://www.bblisa.org/mailman/listinfo/bblisa
_______________________________________________
bblisa mailing list
[email protected]
http://www.bblisa.org/mailman/listinfo/bblisa
