Nekochan Net

I just have a quick comment regarding the reliability of various DLT tape technologies -- the DLT8000 is the single largest enterprise-class tape drive model ever sold, and lasted something on the order of 5 years from what I recall, before Quantum decided to EOL it.

Knowing that there were more DLT8000's sold than DLT7000's, then apparently there wasn't anything fundamentally wrong with the DLT8000 as a product. Sure, you can have problem units, just like you can have problems with any piece of hardware, but in general, the DLT8000 was a very reliable drive.

I have no experience with LTO or other similar drives, however, so I can't speak to them.

Chris

ok, seems another one of those external SCSI boxes will be inevitable then
as far as storage environment goes - i was thinking of putting critical tapes (and backup-harddrives) into a safe at my local bank, so in case my gear got damaged or stolen, at least i'd keep my data.
question is if a safe is actually a good place to store those tapes?

It depends on the safe in question. Most in banks will be climate controlled and dry, which is what you want.

We used to do that at one of my previous jobs, but we put the dlt's in a briefcase, which we placed in a safe deposit box. Engineering data can be worth a lot...

If you're that serious about your backup that you would consider storing them in a bank vault (which is about as safe as you can get), you'll want to make two separate backups of your data. Used DLT-IV tapes are dirt cheap at this point, and even new tapes are cheap, too, so it's worth the investment.

If you're going to be transporting them on a regular basis, you'd probably want to get something like this:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... 0005481391

Chris

I used to have a DLT autoloader until last year. Now I'm using removable FireWire harddisks, because:
1) Speed. In the end, the DLT loader was taking almost 24hrs to perform an L0 dump.
2) Capacity. The autoloader had space for 6x 20/40 DLT tapes, now I've got 500GB disks
3) Power usage/noise: Being scsi, the autoloader had to be switched on all the time, using 100W or so of electricity and it was very noisy. I won't miss it
All of these, except #3 could have been remedied by replacing my old autoloader with a more modern 40/80 DLT or something like that. Because of #3 I opted for the disks which can be easily unplugged when done and taken off-site.



My data isn't mission critical or anything like that, but I would hate to have to re-rip all my CD's, loose all my photos, or even have to reload all the IRIX install disks to the server. I usually keep one of the FireWire disks in my desk at work. The fact that there's an XFS filesystem on them is a good case of security-through-obscurity

_________________
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It turns out that when reset, the WD33C93 defaults to a SCSI ID of 0, and it was simpler to leave it that way... -- Dave Olson, in comp.sys.sgi
Currently in commercial service: (2x)
In the museum: almost every MIPS/IRIX system.
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Right up until they are plugged into a machine running Linux. Perhaps even a Linux LiveCD.

The server being backed up is running Linux (I wouldn't trust my backups to IRIX FireWire anyway). But at $work it's mostly Windows.

_________________
Now this is a deep dark secret, so everybody keep it quiet
It turns out that when reset, the WD33C93 defaults to a SCSI ID of 0, and it was simpler to leave it that way... -- Dave Olson, in comp.sys.sgi
Currently in commercial service: (2x)
In the museum: almost every MIPS/IRIX system.
Wanted: GM1 board for Professional Series GT graphics (030-0076-003, 030-0076-004)

It's good up until the point that somebody "borrows" the disk from your desk, plugs it in, sees an "empty" disk and erases/writes their stuff on it from said Windows machine.

That isn't what I meant. I was commenting on the *lack* of obscurity in using XFS for your backups, despite Windows running amok at your workplace.

i can confirm that the dlt 35/70 works flawlessly.
i'm using it with any kind of standard irix tool and networker.

_________________
r-a-c.de

I'm thinking about doing this; I have an SGI DLT-7000 inbound which I'd like to connect up to my Tezro and have the ability to back up my O350 remotely via network.

Does xfsdump/xfsrestore work with autoloaders, or are you pretty much confined to filesystems that will fit a single tape?

_________________
Twitter: @neko_no_ko
IRIX Release 4.0.5 IP12 Version 06151813 System V
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All Rights Reserved.

I used to XFSdump to a DLT library. At least the Linux version of xfsdump will take media size as an argument and call a script of your choice when it runs out. This script has to call a utility to load the next tape into the library.

I've never attempted any of this on IRIX.

EDIT: The utility I used to operate the library (on Linux) was 'mtx' : http://sourceforge.net/projects/mtx

_________________
Now this is a deep dark secret, so everybody keep it quiet
It turns out that when reset, the WD33C93 defaults to a SCSI ID of 0, and it was simpler to leave it that way... -- Dave Olson, in comp.sys.sgi
Currently in commercial service: (2x)
In the museum: almost every MIPS/IRIX system.
Wanted: GM1 board for Professional Series GT graphics (030-0076-003, 030-0076-004)

As jan-jaap implied, xfsdump/xfsrestore does not directly support autoloaders. You need to have some means of swapping tapes, as well as keeping track of multiple tapes and their contents. AFAIK, xfsdump/xfsrestore doesn't have that, so that means using scripting to augment xfsd/r, or selecting an autoloader-aware alternative. Tape management is not trivial (e.g. what happens if a tape is removed from the autoloader or moved to a different slot?), and it's actually one of the major reasons why it can be worth the big $$ for enterprise backup software like Networker, etc.

One other thing to keep in mind: you will likely need to configure drivers for both the autoloader and any DLT drive(s) which might reside in the autoloader. Not hard, IIRC, but it tripped me up until I realized that I needed to configure both when I had a 15 tape autoloader at work.

At home, I've just kept my filesystems small enough to fit on a single tape, so I haven't worried about it.

Related to this topic, a shameless plug for my favorite service provider _in any category_:

http://www.rsync.net

you would be well served to familiarize yourself with them - for home or your employer. It's the only filedump/offsite backup provider that "just worked" with my Irix systems...

Interesting tip re rsync.net. Have you tried restoring data? How did it go? How fast?