3

We are looking for Tape Backup solutions but bit confused the difference between LTO Tape Drive and LTO Cartridges .

We want to backup data (1 PB) from Linux servers for long term secure environment.

Note: Dell Bellow is just for example . it is not a product question.

1) Tape Media Library : http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/tape-backup-media

What is the difference between LTO Drive and Cartridges ?

2) http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/powervault-ml6030/pd
It mentioned both LT Drive and LTO Cartridges capacities , Do we need both ?

3) What is the benefit of Auto-Loader , what if we dont have it ?

Zeeshan
  • 53
  • 3

1 Answers1

3

Tape media are the actual removable tape cartridges that hold the data, tape drives are the machines that write the data to the cartridges and tape libraries/auto-loaders are one or more tape drives that are capable of managing multiple tape cartridges. You'd definitely going to need either a library or auto-loader for the amount of data you need to store.

If you can you need to go for the most capacitous tape cartridges you can (currently LTO-7 if I recall correctly) as they're comparatively fast and hold the most data - you'll need less of them that way you see.

What I would say is that you need help, I'm not being nasty but if you needed help with the basic terms there's a pretty good chance you'll need help spec'ing and implementing a system such as this. Now Dell don't actually make those items, they re-badge them, if I were you I'd contact Quantum who probably make that kit originally and get them to help you directly, they've always been very helpful for me in the past anyway. You'll also need to pick some form of backup software to drive the tape system - most OS's come with enough to fire them up but they lack a lot of very useful features - look at NetBackup or my favourite Commvault Simpana - these will do a great job of backing up and managing your whole data requirements via a GUI.

Chopper3
  • 101,299
  • 9
  • 108
  • 239
  • So basically if we buy tape library , we just need to buy cartridges not tape drives ? -- I will contact quantum thanks for tip – Zeeshan Mar 29 '16 at 08:44
  • You buy a tape library, which contains at least one tape drive which will then be fed with multiple tape cartridges - does that help? – Chopper3 Mar 29 '16 at 08:56
  • Found this one " tape library automates the retrieval, storage, and management of tape cartridges. Tape cartridges are stored in the library and mounted and dismounted from tape drives using firmware running on the library or software running on the host systems. " – Zeeshan Mar 29 '16 at 10:13
  • In theory 167 LTO-7 tapes of 6TB each is enough to store 1PB of data. If the actual capacity of LTO-7 tapes vary as much as it did for LTO-4, one should plan for more tapes to be sure. And of course tape cartridges and drives can fail like any other piece of hardware, so some redundancy is needed. This number of media is large enough that a small library would be needed. No reason to go for one of the big libraries (most vendors have libraries on the 10k media scale, and some even bigger). – kasperd Mar 29 '16 at 10:46
  • @kasperd I never bank on any form of backup compression working - but then I work in the VoD market so a lot of our content is pre-compressed - but it's still a good assumption to make I feel. – Chopper3 Mar 29 '16 at 14:12
  • @Chopper3 The 6TB I cited is without compression. With compression the capacity is 15TB. I have no idea why the 15TB figure should be trusted in the first place though. The improvement in compression ratio from 2 to 2.5 quite conveniently happened just as the LTO Consortium had failed to make the originally planned improvements from LTO-4 to LTO-5. – kasperd Mar 29 '16 at 14:41
  • @kasperd I couldn't agree with you more, I never assume their compression will do anything. – Chopper3 Mar 29 '16 at 17:49
  • @Chopper3 Even with compression disabled there will be variations in capacity though. I have seen LTO-4 capacities vary between 270GB and 840GB. Usually I would RMA drives which couldn't do more than 650GB. – kasperd Mar 29 '16 at 18:02
  • @kasperd - Really? I've never come across that, how odd, to be honest I never really administrated tape systems, I design stuff but have no operational responsibilities so wouldn't see that, very odd behaviour though, thanks for letting me know. – Chopper3 Mar 29 '16 at 19:19