Re: Replacing tape changer with USB disk drives.
I just looked at one of the most popular online shops around here. They have about 50 different USB enclosures; prices start at 10 EUR. But they have only six Firewire enclosures (and none of them is 2.5"!), the cheapest one is 34 EUR. i think this 24 EUR it's worth of. However, they do have a larger number of eSATA enclosures, SATA works fine too. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
Re: Replacing tape changer with USB disk drives.
On Jun 17, 2008, at 11:40 AM, Oliver Fromme wrote: Wojciech Puchar <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: you must have something wrong. my USB drive gets 27MB/s. yes this 480Mbit/s is USB isn't real, but half of it is. I agree. Want to take this private and help figure out what's wrong? :-) i simply have no idea why it could work so slow. Cheap controller in the USB enclosure. I've used quite a few USB enclosures in the past years, and there are significant performance differences. As a rule of thumb, the cheaper the box, the slower it is. Of course there are exceptions to that rule. By the way, for backup purposes I use a hot-swappable IDE drive frame. The one I use is PATA (UDMA-133), but there are also ones for SATA. It's much faster than USB and more reliable. You can use atacontrol(8) to attach and detach the drive while the system is running. (For that to work reliably, the frame must be the only device on its channel, i.e. no slave, in the PATA case.) Best regards Oliver I get good speeds from USB but they are bursty. I have a pair of identical controllers and both are USB/Firewire. Both have different brands and sizes of disk drive. Could the drive be part of the problem? One is connected via Firewire and doesn't have the bursty speed issue. I've only got it with USB. The poster who mentioned that I'm only looking for a backup against catastrophic disk failure is spot on. Offsite backup is something I'll work out down the road. Chris Hilton e: chris|at|vindaloo| dot|com "The pattern juggler lifts his hand; The orchestra begin. As slowly turns the grinding wheel in the court of the crimson king." -- Ian McDonald / Peter Sinfield ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
Re: Replacing tape changer with USB disk drives.
Wojciech Puchar <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Cheap controller in the USB enclosure. I've used quite > > a few USB enclosures in the past years, and there are > > significant performance differences. As a rule of thumb, > > the cheaper the box, the slower it is. Of course there > > are exceptions to that rule. > > actually - firewire enclosures are not much more expensive, but you always > get at least 40MB/s Actually they are much more expensive. And more difficult to buy. Most shops here don't have them at all, they only have USB and eSATA, because most people want USB or eSATA. I just looked at one of the most popular online shops around here. They have about 50 different USB enclosures; prices start at 10 EUR. But they have only six Firewire enclosures (and none of them is 2.5"!), the cheapest one is 34 EUR. However, they do have a larger number of eSATA enclosures, about 30 different ones. But I don't know how well FreeBSD copes with hot-plugging of eSATA devices; I've never tried one of these. I'm not aware of any specific support yet, but it might work just as well as hot-plug IDE frames. Best regards Oliver -- Oliver Fromme, secnetix GmbH & Co. KG, Marktplatz 29, 85567 Grafing b. M. Handelsregister: Registergericht Muenchen, HRA 74606, Geschäftsfuehrung: secnetix Verwaltungsgesellsch. mbH, Handelsregister: Registergericht Mün- chen, HRB 125758, Geschäftsführer: Maik Bachmann, Olaf Erb, Ralf Gebhart FreeBSD-Dienstleistungen, -Produkte und mehr: http://www.secnetix.de/bsd "[...] one observation we can make here is that Python makes an excellent pseudocoding language, with the wonderful attribute that it can actually be executed." -- Bruce Eckel ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
Re: Replacing tape changer with USB disk drives.
Oliver Fromme writes: > > > > you must have something wrong. my USB drive gets 27MB/s. yes this > > > > 480Mbit/s is USB isn't real, but half of it is. > > > > i simply have no idea why it could work so slow. > > Cheap controller in the USB enclosure. I've used quite > a few USB enclosures in the past years, and there are > significant performance differences. As a rule of thumb, > the cheaper the box, the slower it is. Of course there > are exceptions to that rule. Would you care to offer experiences and recomendations? Robert Huff ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
Re: Replacing tape changer with USB disk drives.
Cheap controller in the USB enclosure. I've used quite a few USB enclosures in the past years, and there are significant performance differences. As a rule of thumb, the cheaper the box, the slower it is. Of course there are exceptions to that rule. actually - firewire enclosures are not much more expensive, but you always get at least 40MB/s ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
Re: Replacing tape changer with USB disk drives.
Wojciech Puchar <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > > > > you must have something wrong. my USB drive gets 27MB/s. yes this > > > 480Mbit/s is USB isn't real, but half of it is. > > > > I agree. > > Want to take this private and help figure out what's wrong? > > :-) > > i simply have no idea why it could work so slow. Cheap controller in the USB enclosure. I've used quite a few USB enclosures in the past years, and there are significant performance differences. As a rule of thumb, the cheaper the box, the slower it is. Of course there are exceptions to that rule. By the way, for backup purposes I use a hot-swappable IDE drive frame. The one I use is PATA (UDMA-133), but there are also ones for SATA. It's much faster than USB and more reliable. You can use atacontrol(8) to attach and detach the drive while the system is running. (For that to work reliably, the frame must be the only device on its channel, i.e. no slave, in the PATA case.) Best regards Oliver -- Oliver Fromme, secnetix GmbH & Co. KG, Marktplatz 29, 85567 Grafing b. M. Handelsregister: Registergericht Muenchen, HRA 74606, Geschäftsfuehrung: secnetix Verwaltungsgesellsch. mbH, Handelsregister: Registergericht Mün- chen, HRB 125758, Geschäftsführer: Maik Bachmann, Olaf Erb, Ralf Gebhart FreeBSD-Dienstleistungen, -Produkte und mehr: http://www.secnetix.de/bsd "It combines all the worst aspects of C and Lisp: a billion different sublanguages in one monolithic executable. It combines the power of C with the readability of PostScript." -- Jamie Zawinski, when asked: "What's wrong with perl?" ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
Re: Replacing tape changer with USB disk drives.
you must have something wrong. my USB drive gets 27MB/s. yes this 480Mbit/s is USB isn't real, but half of it is. I agree. Want to take this private and help figure out what's wrong? :-) i simply have no idea why it could work so slow. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
Re: Replacing tape changer with USB disk drives.
Wojciech Puchar writes: > >I /do/ have problems with speed. The fast recorded throughput > > was aroud 3.5 bytes/second; faster than the SCSI-1 DLT it replaces, > > you must have something wrong. my USB drive gets 27MB/s. yes this > 480Mbit/s is USB isn't real, but half of it is. I agree. Want to take this private and help figure out what's wrong? :-) Robert Huff ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
Re: Replacing tape changer with USB disk drives.
Wojciech Puchar writes: Wojciech Puchar writes: > > Do the tapes get taken off-site, or do they sit in the same > > location that the servers will burn when a fire breaks out? > > probably sits on place, if not he wouldn't need tape changer, but > would change manually :) The backup system previously mentioned stores the data four feet from the machine serviced. It is - explicitly - designed to protect against catastrophic disk failure, not conflagration. And the backup job runs at 01:59:00, when all operators are happily asleep. The other advantage to this system is the cost. A (new) SCSI LTO-2 and 35 tapes runs US $2000 and up; the same four week's capacity is less than $400, maybe less than $300. Robert Huff ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
Re: Replacing tape changer with USB disk drives.
Steve Bertrand wrote: Wojciech Puchar wrote: - monthly - yearly ...cycle them in that manner. No matter what anyone says, experience states that I will bet on my monthly and yearly tapes as opposed to hard disk every time when the CFO is under pressure to get that directory that was 'overlooked' at last fiscal tax time. I've just realized that after being awake for far too long, some people may be reconsidering their use of tapes and replacing them with hard disks now ;) Steve ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
Re: Replacing tape changer with USB disk drives.
Wojciech Puchar wrote: Do the tapes get taken off-site, or do they sit in the same location that the servers will burn when a fire breaks out? probably sits on place, if not he wouldn't need tape changer, but would change manually :) ...not always. A tape changer in some cases is the difference between someone getting off of their a**, and not. Once the network backup is complete, cycle this complete backup to tape which can be taken off site for longer term storage (after the network backup to 'hot' storage is done, the tape backup time becomes irrelevant). today tapes are so expensive (not just drives, but tapes) that it's better to just have many disks and swap them. Expensive is in the eye of the beholder. I have DDS-1 tapes, in the drawer above my head that are from pre-2001 that I can still pull data from. As a matter of fact, I've never (knock on wood) experienced a bad tape (numerous types). In that meantime, I've electro-magnetized dozens of platter-based hard disk drives that just went 'bad' (and subsequently recovered/restored servers from live, and tape-based backup for). I personally don't think that swapping hard-disks (one, or many per day) is a viable, feasible or cost effective approach as a backup solution for long-term data storage, especially if you prefer to be able to recover the data. Here: - network to live storage (hourly perhaps) - live storage to tape - daily - weekly - monthly - yearly ...cycle them in that manner. No matter what anyone says, experience states that I will bet on my monthly and yearly tapes as opposed to hard disk every time when the CFO is under pressure to get that directory that was 'overlooked' at last fiscal tax time. Steve ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
Re: Replacing tape changer with USB disk drives.
Do the tapes get taken off-site, or do they sit in the same location that the servers will burn when a fire breaks out? probably sits on place, if not he wouldn't need tape changer, but would change manually :) Once the network backup is complete, cycle this complete backup to tape which can be taken off site for longer term storage (after the network backup to 'hot' storage is done, the tape backup time becomes irrelevant). today tapes are so expensive (not just drives, but tapes) that it's better to just have many disks and swap them. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
Re: Replacing tape changer with USB disk drives.
and six incremental backups. I have had no problems with reliability. I /do/ have problems with speed. The fast recorded throughput was aroud 3.5 bytes/second; faster than the SCSI-1 DLT it replaces, you must have something wrong. my USB drive gets 27MB/s. yes this 480Mbit/s is USB isn't real, but half of it is. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
Re: Replacing tape changer with USB disk drives.
Christopher Sean Hilton wrote: I run FreeBSD 7.0-STABLE on a file server and until recently used a Tape Changer for backups. I'm considering my options for a new backup solution. I'm actually thinking of ditching tape and using an externally attached USB or Firewire disk drive. Do the tapes get taken off-site, or do they sit in the same location that the servers will burn when a fire breaks out? My experimentation isn't giving me good feelings about doing this with FreeBSD. To start this off I installed an Adaptec USB 2.0 interface into my server. In the time that I've been working with it I notice that it periodically bogs down and that it has the potential to panic the kernel and cause a reboot. I recognize that this could be: The USB card that I'm using. The chipset in the USB enclosure that I'm testing with. Has anyone gone this route? If so what was your experience? Yes, I use external USB 2.0 external disks for backup for workstations that are encrypted with either GELI or TrueCrypt on the fly. The problem with USB hard disks is that they A) are prone to failure very quickly (as has been pointed out); and B) they never get taken off-site on a routine basis as they should. My recommendation (FWIW) would be to build/buy/acquire a network storage device with a 1000Mbps Ethernet interface that you back up your entire network to. Depending on the size of your network, it may be advisable to pop an extra NIC (gigE) in every box that requires a backup and create yourself a private backup subnet, as to not disturb the production network. Once the network backup is complete, cycle this complete backup to tape which can be taken off site for longer term storage (after the network backup to 'hot' storage is done, the tape backup time becomes irrelevant). This setup provides an always-on, live-as-of-yesterday recovery mechanism without having to load tape. Also, depending on the amount of data that requires backup, and the throughput capacity/cost of your Internet link(s), it is always a benefit to do an rsync (or equivalent) copy to a remote location, in order to best accommodate a 'hot spare' location (ie, users migrate to remote temporary location, and have to change as little as possible). USB disks are as useful as the people that you put in charge of taking them off-site, multiplied by the number of drives you cycle, divided by the life expectancy of the disks (and/or the people taking them offsite ;) One more thing...a good backup is not measured in how far back the backup goes...a good backup is measured in the amount of time it takes to recover from it Steve ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
Re: Replacing tape changer with USB disk drives.
On Jun 16, 2008, at 7:34 PM, Chuck Swiger wrote: On Jun 16, 2008, at 3:59 PM, Christopher Sean Hilton wrote: External drives make nice, fast external hot-standby backups. They are lousy for making long-term backups that you can take offsite, though. I can and have restored decade old 20/40GB and 40/80GB DLTtape IV cartridges, and have happily moved to a 220GB sDLT drive. I've got a few 10-year-old SCSI drives that still work, but I've yet to find a commodity PATA IDE or SATA IDE brand of drives which make it much over 5 years, and a large percentage have issues trying to get much past 3 years of heavy usage. I've had pretty much the same result. SCSI Drives seem to have a solid lifetime of about 3+ years with some of them lasting better than 6. I'm not trying to keep my backups that long though. This is basically insurance against a catastrophic machine failure more than anything else. The machine in question has a Mylex Acceleraid 250 and RAID 5 SCSI array with a hot spare. The function of this backup is to protect my time if the RAID array fails for some reason that I cannot diagnose quickly. To some extent I also need the ability to go back in time if delete a file by accident but that's happened once in the past 5 years. While I really liked the AHA 1540/2940 controllers, I'm dubious about Adaptec's USB controllers. I've got a few external drives with both USB2 and Firewire 400 interfaces, and they are faster and more reliable going over Firewire. YMMV... I've had the Adaptec Firewire controller and have the same problem as I do with the USB one. I have a hand full of USB drives in external enclosures that I used for different things. Mostly to transfer video from one place to another. Right now I'm using one of them and getting rid of some ancient video that I no longer need. My USB drive has a UFS2 filesystem on it and it's mounted with Softupdates turned on. When I remove a large file or a large directory. Everything works great for a minute and then file access to the drive just stalls. A good minute later everything is fine. The interface is either USB or Firewire because the enclosure can do either. -- Chris Chris Hilton tildeChris -- http://myblog.vindaloo.com email -- chris/at/vindaloo/ dot/com .~ ~ .--.~ ~.--.~~.--.~~.--.~~.--.~~.--.~~.--.~~.--.~~.--.~~.--.~~.--.~~.--.~~. "I'm on the outside looking inside, What do I see? Much confusion, disillution, all around me." -- Ian McDonald / Peter Sinfield ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
Replacing tape changer with USB disk drives.
Christopher Sean Hilton writes: > I run FreeBSD 7.0-STABLE on a file server and until recently used a > Tape Changer for backups. I'm considering my options for a new backup > solution. I'm actually thinking of ditching tape and using an > externally attached USB or Firewire disk drive. > > Has anyone gone this route? If so what was your experience? I have been using this for at least a year - USB2 connecting to a PATA drive. The protocol dumps a week's worth on one disk: a full and six incremental backups. I have had no problems with reliability. I /do/ have problems with speed. The fast recorded throughput was aroud 3.5 bytes/second; faster than the SCSI-1 DLT it replaces, but nowhere near the 60 mbytes/second of the USB, (Yes, I know it's "theoretical maximum" ... but even if we halve it and then halve is again, we're still factor-of-4 off the actual performance.) This has resisted serious attempts for remedy, Hardware: no-name disks Addonics Saturn drive cartridge system Acer Labs USB2 add-on controller Robert Huff ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
Re: Replacing tape changer with USB disk drives.
On Jun 16, 2008, at 3:59 PM, Christopher Sean Hilton wrote: I run FreeBSD 7.0-STABLE on a file server and until recently used a Tape Changer for backups. I'm considering my options for a new backup solution. I'm actually thinking of ditching tape and using an externally attached USB or Firewire disk drive. External drives make nice, fast external hot-standby backups. They are lousy for making long-term backups that you can take offsite, though. I can and have restored decade old 20/40GB and 40/80GB DLTtape IV cartridges, and have happily moved to a 220GB sDLT drive. I've got a few 10-year-old SCSI drives that still work, but I've yet to find a commodity PATA IDE or SATA IDE brand of drives which make it much over 5 years, and a large percentage have issues trying to get much past 3 years of heavy usage. My experimentation isn't giving me good feelings about doing this with FreeBSD. To start this off I installed an Adaptec USB 2.0 interface into my server. In the time that I've been working with it I notice that it periodically bogs down and that it has the potential to panic the kernel and cause a reboot. I recognize that this could be: While I really liked the AHA 1540/2940 controllers, I'm dubious about Adaptec's USB controllers. I've got a few external drives with both USB2 and Firewire 400 interfaces, and they are faster and more reliable going over Firewire. YMMV... Regards, -- -Chuck ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
Replacing tape changer with USB disk drives.
I run FreeBSD 7.0-STABLE on a file server and until recently used a Tape Changer for backups. I'm considering my options for a new backup solution. I'm actually thinking of ditching tape and using an externally attached USB or Firewire disk drive. My experimentation isn't giving me good feelings about doing this with FreeBSD. To start this off I installed an Adaptec USB 2.0 interface into my server. In the time that I've been working with it I notice that it periodically bogs down and that it has the potential to panic the kernel and cause a reboot. I recognize that this could be: The USB card that I'm using. The chipset in the USB enclosure that I'm testing with. Has anyone gone this route? If so what was your experience? -- Chris Chris Hilton tildeChris -- http://myblog.vindaloo.com email -- chris/at/vindaloo/ dot/com .~ ~ .--.~ ~.--.~~.--.~~.--.~~.--.~~.--.~~.--.~~.--.~~.--.~~.--.~~.--.~~.--.~~. "I'm on the outside looking inside, What do I see? Much confusion, disillution, all around me." -- Ian McDonald / Peter Sinfield ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
