on 7/25/2000 3:07 AM, Larry Acosta Wong at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> So, which is the winner? For me, I'm torn between the VXA-1 and
> AIT-1. The PC Mag article made the VXA-1 look pretty bad but I'm
> thinking that it's just relative and that the performance numbers for
> the AIT-1 would be pretty similar. Plus the July Ecrix promo making
> the VXA 70% cheaper than the AIT forces me to try out the VXA. Even
> better, I can buy two VXA drives for less than the cost of one AIT
> drive and make a poor man's autoloader!
>
>
> One last alternative, a friend of mine decided to skip the whole tape
> drive thing and buy a Quantum Snap Server 4000 ($2,469) instead. The
> Snap Servers ship with DataKeeper. Anyone have any experience with
> this? It only works under Windows but it allows "real-time"
> continuous back-up. On the Snap Server 4000, you get up to 120GB of
> storage.
At 70% cheaper, the VXA is definitely the way to go, especially if most of
your backup data is being pulled across the network AND your backup data
will fit on one VXA tape (I hate swapping tapes). While backing up the local
machine to the VXA drive, Retrospect reported 4Mbps throughput at one point,
but the network backups are considerably slower (though still more than
twice as fast to the VXA than to a DDS-3). I think that the VXA has allowed
us to max out the network bandwidth, so we wouldn't see any real benefit
speed-wise by using a higher-dollar AIT.
We're actually using your second idea for our offsite backups. I set up an
old Motorola PPC clone with Mac OS 9, Rumpus, and a 50Gb LVD drive in
another facility...we do a local backup to the VXA, and an offsite backup to
an ftp storage set on the clone.
So, we never have to shuttle tapes back and forth for the offsite backup,
and a week's worth of local backups fits on one VXA tape. It all adds up to
a major decrease in the hassle factor of our backup strategy, and it didn't
cost much at all. That makes me happy, plus it impresses my boss. :)
<><
Jon L. Gardner '89, Computer Systems Manager <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Texas A&M University Dept. of Food Services <http://food.tamu.edu/>
Tel 979.458.1839 * Fax 979.845.2157 * Hip 979.229.4323
PGP public key available at <http://food.tamu.edu/pgp/jon.html>
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