Linux Server Backup Solutions

[Phil Stracchino]

On Fri, May 14, 2004 at 11:30:03AM -0400, Jeremy Portzer wrote:
> On Thu, 2004-05-13 at 21:07, James Brigman wrote:
> > If you're stuck with the Exabyte, buy lots of cleaning tapes and use
> > them often to keep the heads clean. It ought to work a tad bit better
> > that way. Then use the $$ cost of the cleaning tapes to justify
> > something sane, like a DLT.
> 
> Last night at the TriLUG meeting, a number of people mentioned that
> cleaning tapes are a bad idea because their abrasive nature can wear out
> the drive heads after a while.  Any thoughts on that comment?

This is indeed a valid concern.  Some cleaning tapes are more abrasive
than others (VXA cleaning tapes, for one, are I believe intended to be
non-abrasive, as - I think - are AIT cleaning tapes).  Older
helical-scan tape technologies tended to both have more abrasive
cleaning media, and dirtier tape media that required cleaning the drive
more frequently.

> > Going with another hard drive for disk-to-disk backup would be a huge
> > improvement. You could build a raw TB of IDE drive space for about
> > $1000. 
> 
> Definitely.  If you have to really *count* on your backups, modern IDE
> drives are a bit iffy, but you could setup RAID5 or RAID zero on the
> backup server too, to allow for some redundancy.
> 
> Even despite this caveat, I don't see why people put up with the hassle
> of maintaining tape drives, tapes, libraries, and the inconvenience of a
> character-device backup system.  Hard drives are SO MUCH EASIER on you,
> the sysadmin, the user when restores are needed, and the bottom line, in
> most cases.  

However, it can be a bitch to send them offsite.  They're not designed
as removable media.  You're between the horns of a dilemma -- if you
back up to insite disk storage, the same accident (say, a fire) that
takes out your main servers could very well take out your backups too.
And if you send them off site, you face the risk that if you need to
restore from them after a disaster, they're significantly more likely
than tape to be damaged (simply because they're more fragile).


It's not about easy.  It's about being able to recover your data after
the shit has hit the fan and you really, really need it.


-- 
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