Thanks for the comments so far. As I noted (or tried to) this is a second hand request and is specifically *not* backup - it's
> tape library management apps for a linux box with an > attached library for simple tape archival use. We're talking about people who want to put a bunch of data on a tape that may or may not be needed in 5 years time. Perhaps 10. The "archival" bit is relevant; it's not a "backup". I did not explain that this is a "remote" system wherein Joe User has a (bunch of) data that falls into this category that he wants to write to tape. In fact, there are multiple Joes at multiple points around the planet. There isn't a remote operator to phone up and ask to diddle with the tape library - Joe wants to "do something" that results in the data he points at being written to a tape (actually probably two), those tapes then being removed at some point by someone on site and filed appropriately. This sort of operation was not a problem when Dinosaurs roamed the earth and some of us were running mainframe operating systems that managed tape libraries that would track ownership of tapes. It's possible that in the future a BluRay drive would be an alternative, but that's still only what, maybe 50GB? Tapes can hold a lot more, and we are talking about several hundred GB or more. Yes, you could write it to a couple of 1TB disks, but (as mentioned elsewhere), I don't want to spin it for five or 10 years; there are handy "removable disk units" which sound good, but I haven't seen one with an autoloader, so it's manual intervention every time it's needed. Pulling it back over "the wire" is sort of an option, but with large amounts of data it can take a long time (unless you have lot of bandwidth :) As the old saying goes, 'never understimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes...' Tim -- Tim Kirby [email protected] _______________________________________________ Tech mailing list [email protected] http://lopsa.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tech This list provided by the League of Professional System Administrators http://lopsa.org/
