Date: Fri, 23 Aug 2002 18:55:00 -0400 From: Bill Moran <wmoran@potentialtech.com> To: David Kelly <dkelly@hiwaay.net> Cc: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: I'm looking for low-cost, 120G backup solution. Message-ID: <3D66BD44.1060106@potentialtech.com> References: <3D6662D1.6090007@potentialtech.com> <20020823222547.GB40397@grumpy.dyndns.org>
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David Kelly wrote: > On Fri, Aug 23, 2002 at 12:29:05PM -0400, Bill Moran wrote: > >>Hello all. >> >>I'm looking for a backup solution that can handle as much >>as 120G (compressed) per tape. >>I was pretty excited about OnStream's systems, except that >>they don't seem to be supported by FreeBSD. Is anyone out >>there using one of these reliably? > > At the prices you mentioned further down the thread, $1000 for the > OnStream drive and $100 per tape one should give serious consideration > to IDE drives as the backup "media". We "sort of" do this with the backup server, which has 76G of drive space and rsyncs the fileserver nightly. The tapes are then made off the backup server. The problem with pure HDD backups is that we want offsite copies. > 80G drives are pretty easy to come by for under $100 each. A quick > non-optimal price check suggests 120G for $165 and 160G for $265. > So it boils down to how many archival copies does one require? (10) 120G > tapes + drive is roughly $2000. (10) 120G IDE HD's is roughly $1650. Hmmm ... pretty tight. The tape solution I found ( VXA-2 drive w/ 80G native tapes) came in at $1874, so it's comparible in price, although it gives us easier handling. Although, if they fill up more than about 90-100G, they'll need 2 tapes per backup and an additional $400 or so. > Add something like an old PII-300 for $100 to $200 to host the backup > HD's. You've said the data doesn't compress, so don't try. Well, we do get some compression from it, so it's probably not a total loss. I think I forgot to elaborate earlier in the thread, that we've already got a dedicated backup machine. > HD's are harder to handle than tapes. Have seen inexpensive removable > trays but don't know how well they work. I'll have to look into that option. But handling is definately an issue, since they like to keep at least one tape offsite (and I approve). > Rather than handle the HD's one could mount (4) in the backup machine > and simply rotate their use. That's problematic, because a) no offsite, b) only 4 days worth of history. With 10 media rotation, we get 4 months of history. > At work I have an 80G HD mounted in my MacOS X G4-400 and do nightly > backups of PC's and Macs with Retrospect to this 80G drive. Is not as > nice as an off-site archive but has saved our tail a couple of times. > Much less wear and tear on the HD than my DDS-2 tape drive. These VXA-2 tapes are supposed to be good for 1000 backups, which is pretty incredible in my opinion. But it's in line with the reliability of the Onstream system that I'm familiar with, so it doesn't supprise me. -- Bill Moran Potential Technologies http://www.potentialtech.com To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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