LTO-9 Tape Drives
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@pete-s said in LTO-9 Tape Drives:
@travisdh1 said in LTO-9 Tape Drives:
@pete-s said in LTO-9 Tape Drives:
@travisdh1 said in LTO-9 Tape Drives:
@pete-s said in LTO-9 Tape Drives:
@eleceng said in LTO-9 Tape Drives:
Noticed that the LTO 9 tapes have just been released (been waiting a while) and I need to purchase some and a stand-alone LTO-9 drive (not a whole library setup or magazine) but not having any luck finding one online to purchase.
i have a small office customer that has a huge amount of data to backup. We currently replicate to a Synology offsite (in the same town) but they want the tape to store out of state.
Has anyone seen any single stand-alone LTO-9 tape drives I can order or anywhere I should be looking?
Didn't know LTO-9 was out...good to know!
I'll question the use of a single standalone tape drive versus a tape library. Tape library is much more flexible.
Sure, tape libraries are much more flexible, but they still don't make sense if you can get by with a single backup tape. Which I'm assuming is why @ElecEng is looking for a single LTO-9 drive.
I don't really agree because the tape library is a tape drive AND a robot that can switch tapes, keep track of them and store them.
It will do it's job regardless if the human is there or not. Which mean the backup will always run, regardless if the person doing it gets sick, is on vacation or if it's a holiday. That makes sense even when everything fits on one tape.
And a tape library is a scalable solution. Meaning you can run more backups more often if you need and if your data grows and overflows into two or more tapes, it's no big deal.
While true, there is also a huge added expense. Just because something is better doesn't excuse not doing proper business planning.
I don't know how much added expense you can expect. I've always been under the impression that the actual tape drive is the most expensive part in a smaller tape library.Had a look at Dells site and the difference between a tape loader with the tape drive and a tape drive is about $2K.
A Dell TL1000 1U tape library with a LTO-8 drive is roughly $7K and a Dell 114x rack mounted LTO-8 tape drive is roughly $5K.
Then you need to add tapes. 10 tapes is a just over $2K.
So we're talking at minimum of $7K regardless. And LTO-9 is going to be more expensive, both the drive and the tapes. New generation always are.
@travisdh1 I wouldn't call $2K a huge added expense. But maybe the client does. Who knows.
$2k is a huge added expense, when it's not needed.
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the OP also mentioned sending the tapes off-site.
So my question is - how often are they sending off-site? daily? in that case a library might make sense to cover those vacation, sick, etc situations... but if it's weekly or even less, then a library makes less and less sense.
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@travisdh1 yes plus a lot lower cost to get started with.
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@dashrender monthly
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@eleceng said in LTO-9 Tape Drives:
@dashrender monthly
Yeah 29% more cost doesn't seem worth it in this case. As long as the company understands the tape might sit there for a the max amount of time someone could be on vacation before actually being sent offsite.
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@pete-s said in LTO-9 Tape Drives:
@travisdh1 said in LTO-9 Tape Drives:
@pete-s said in LTO-9 Tape Drives:
@eleceng said in LTO-9 Tape Drives:
Noticed that the LTO 9 tapes have just been released (been waiting a while) and I need to purchase some and a stand-alone LTO-9 drive (not a whole library setup or magazine) but not having any luck finding one online to purchase.
i have a small office customer that has a huge amount of data to backup. We currently replicate to a Synology offsite (in the same town) but they want the tape to store out of state.
Has anyone seen any single stand-alone LTO-9 tape drives I can order or anywhere I should be looking?
Didn't know LTO-9 was out...good to know!
I'll question the use of a single standalone tape drive versus a tape library. Tape library is much more flexible.
Sure, tape libraries are much more flexible, but they still don't make sense if you can get by with a single backup tape. Which I'm assuming is why @ElecEng is looking for a single LTO-9 drive.
I don't really agree because the tape library is a tape drive AND a robot that can switch tapes, keep track of them and store them.
It will do it's job regardless if the human is there or not. Which mean the backup will always run, regardless if the person doing it gets sick, is on vacation or if it's a holiday. That makes sense even when everything fits on one tape.
And a tape library is a scalable solution. Meaning you can run more backups more often if you need and if your data grows and overflows into two or more tapes, it's no big deal.
This is good IF the place where you write the tapes can be the same place as where you store them. If so, I totally agree. But if you need to send tapes to multiple places or to some deep (generally literally) storage location then having the robot can be wasteful.
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@travisdh1 said in LTO-9 Tape Drives:
While true, there is also a huge added expense. Just because something is better doesn't excuse not doing proper business planning.
It's the proper business planning that determines what better is.
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@scottalanmiller The business owner already has NAS replication which contains all pc and data backups going to a synology at his home.
The plan is to do a monthly backup to tape x 2 and store 1 at locally just for a backup on different media and the second to his home in San Diego which he goes to several times a month for 2-3 day stints.
There are 2 people in the office other than the owner that are IT savvy enough to exchange tapes, etc.
My thoughts were something like the link below as they already have a shelf for this but don't have a rack. Everything is on a multi-level shelf so going with a tape loader would mean purchasing a rack and finding a place to put it.
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@eleceng said in LTO-9 Tape Drives:
@scottalanmiller The business owner already has NAS replication which contains all pc and data backups going to a synology at his home.
The plan is to do a monthly backup to tape x 2 and store 1 at locally just for a backup on different media and the second to his home in San Diego which he goes to several times a month for 2-3 day stints.
There are 2 people in the office other than the owner that are IT savvy enough to exchange tapes, etc.
My thoughts were something like the link below as they already have a shelf for this but don't have a rack. Everything is on a multi-level shelf so going with a tape loader would mean purchasing a rack and finding a place to put it.
Seems reasonable to me.
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@scottalanmiller I guess I will just have to wait until more options roll out I guess. The standard was pushed back a long time so i figured they would have a ton of hardware ready for release but guess not.
