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I want to upgrade my virtual drives and virtual tapes to LTO5.

My physical drives and tapes are LTO3. Will I still be able to run a DUPTAP and copy my information from the virtual LTO5 drive to the physical LTO3 drive?

slayernoah
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L.Cook
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2 Answers2

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LTO5 and LTO 3 have difference only if we're talking about physical tapes. File format inside both LTO3/5 will be same. And there is no sense to upgrade virtual tapes (in my opinion), as you won't transfer backups to physical LTO3 tapes faster, than they can perform it.

Talking about initial backup speed to virtual tapes, we tested both LTO5 and LTO3 with StarWind VTL, duped the backups, and there was no difference between them both showing great results.

Strepsils
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I actually think DUPTAP might handle that...assuming you have less than 400GB on the LTO5 tape.

I don't believe DUPTAP would take 1.5TB of data on a virtual LTO5 and split it into 4 400GB LTO3 tapes.

Even if it does, why would you want to? A virtual LTO5 isn't going to get you anything over a virtual LTO3, besides bigger storage spaces (and thus less of them). You won't see any speed differences.

You're dealing with virtual drives anyway...why not create a new one and try it yourself?

Charles
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    I was under the impression that the LTO5 had higher speeds and I would be able to finish my saves quicker. Then I want to dupe them to physical LTO3 tapes to move off site. – L.Cook Jan 20 '17 at 15:14
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    Physical LTO5 certainly is faster than physical LTO3....but AFAIK, virtual tape is limited by the disk subsystem... In fact, unless you have a dedicated disk subsystem for the virtual tape, it is often faster to backup directly to tape assuming a dedicated tape controller; and a disk subsystem fast enough to feed it. – Charles Jan 20 '17 at 21:20