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Backupdrives and Tape?


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Hello,

 

i am planing a backupsolution for about 1.5TB i want to do a daily backup on one G5 with about 4-5 clients.

I want to have a max troughput. What would be the best HD solution, just a bunch of external FW800 drives?

Would it be better to have a case with 2 750gb drives in raidlevel 0 with 2 other drives that mirror that raid level 0 (sorry i forgot the raid level number for that, anyone knows this?)

 

One question what hapends of one drive fails? Would i have acces to the other drives?

 

Then i want to have a tape system for the weekly backup. What is the fastest and biggest, best tape drive at the moment AIT or DLT ?

 

Thanx for any help!!!

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Some more info would be helpful, assuming you have those detail on your source machines (aka clients). A good way to go is Retrospect's (retro's) Backup Server available in all the Mac retro versions. Speaking of software what Retrospect software are you considering?

 

HD backup storage:

- JBOD (just a bunch of drives). Retro fills 'em up in the order that you set in a script. You can tell retro to use one drive or cluster them all together as an array (done in Apple's Drive Utility) or alternate them if a single (or two arrays) hold all your data. With the size of your storage 1.5TB a Raid array would probably be needed as you suggest- two 750GB SATA's. The downside of JBODs- no backup if any part of the arrangement fails. Retro will try to deal with a failed drive. The bigger the failed segment the worse off for your backup... That's the generality of it.

- RAID level 0. Still a cluster of drive seen as one to retro. Speed is the advantage with this array. You can get a controller to run it fast but keep in mind that retro throughput might depend more on the connection between Client and Server than the speed of your backup array. See above for caveats about failure.

-RAID level 5. Provides protection for failed portions of the array and features like hot swap and the like make for convenient on line storage or access to your backup.

 

Tape:

- SAIT vs. DLT vs. LTO vs. AIT. AIT is old, SAIT from Sony and others is a still viable competitor to DLT. LTO seems to be the latest for server side backup solutions. Several manufacturers make the drives. Media is small and easily stored off site. LTO is popular from HP and others.

- If all you really care about is throughput, then go here or at other sites, http://www.lascon.co.uk/d010003.htm

 

 

Backup scripts.

You will need to make backup scripts for your server, and client backups. I used to do tape backup. A couple of years ago, went to only FWHD as my needs changed. I use the Backup Server with a main and alternate Backup Drive backing up one laptop client and one desktop. 300GB drives suit my situation nicely. Redundant backups will serve much better than constantly erasing and replacing data on one backup set. You need to determine the worst case scenario of how much data you could be comfortable losing in a catastrophe! That number will more determine how often to back up and how much data to store (replacement data).

 

In conclusion, I consider it a fallacy to just care about backup speed and nothing else. My back up speed as measured in retro varies considerably (200~400MB/min). I suggest you consider all the variables:

- Speed of the computers both client and server.

- Speed of the connections between client and server.

- Speed of the connection between tape/HD and server.

- Throughput capability of server/client connection.

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