Jolly Student wrote:

Ron:

Thank you for your words of wisdom. I personally like the fast no tape
system but the bug up my butt is that we dont have anything off site. If
you told me to get this or that and that its more reliable than tape, but
that I can TAKE IT OFF SITE, I dont care if it looks like a barbie
lunchbox.
. . sign me up.

I'm not sure if it's the troll in me or if it's just that that image is too
good to pass up. But why not build yourself a couple or three little
mini-ITX machines in Barbie lunchboxen? Assuming of course that Barbie
lunchboxen aren't horribly expensive collectables these days. Just plug it
into the network and do your backup and take it home.

Do you have any info on credible removable SATA HDs in trays and good
carrying cases for offsite backup.

All SATA drives are inherently removable--hot-plug is part of the spec. All
you need is something with the right backplane and mounting rails, similar
to SCA hot-swap enclosures for SCSI. Froogle CSE-M35T1B for one example
from a reputable manufacturer--Supermicro is a well established
manufacturer of server and workstation motherboards and components. Or you
can just run the power and signal cables out a hole in the front of the
case and plug the drive into them.

As for good carrying cases, go to the Pelican site http://www.pelican.com/
and find one the size you want.

Right now I have a pair of Imega 280gb
fire wire drives that I am trying to use for the purpose, but they have
their issues. I still like the convenience of tape on account of size,
but if you are telling me there is something more reliable than tape and
that has the offsite features I am looking for, great, no sweat, I will do
it.

DLT cartridges are only slightly smaller than 3-1/2" disks and somewhat
larger than 2-1/2". LTOs are larger. I don't see the physical dimensions
of the media as an issue unless you're willing to go to helical scan.

I fear that the director will, however, then have another excuse because I
think the issue here is that he just wants to be right. My fear is
protecting our organization from a major disaster and although I am being
overly cautious, I really like the idea of taking a full backup home with
me on a Monday (after full backup on Sunday) and then the baby backups the
other days for the sake of, well, just in case something happens, then its
a pain in the butt, but not a total disaster.

These removable devices that are not tape based, how are they in terms of
ease of portability and size. Well, I know they will not likely be cheap,
but, well. Shoot sir.

Thank you for your time and wisdom.



"Jolly Student" wrote in message
et...
Okay Folks:

Here is one for all of you who thought that people could not get any
dumber.

Yes, I am cross posting here but the recommendations for such are only
in
the case where the subject matter concerns a bunch of groups.

Your cross posts did not appear. What were the other NGs?

I think this
qualifies as such.

I work for a mid-sized company (600 employees) whose "Technology
Director"
has openly said that "Tape backups are not reliable".


For those of us who have been around for quite awhile that statement is
very
accurate. Tape backups have never been really relaible because tape
technology is inherrently unrelaible.

This director had a
"consultant" come in to back up his assertion, a consultant who asked
to check his email via his "AOL" account (indeed, his email address is
something like ).

Enough jokes aside - its going to get serious and this group seems to
be spreading the rumor that "Tape Backups are Always Unreliable".

They are right HOWEVER that does not mean that tapes have no useful
purpose
in any situation.

So we now we have a huge, Raid 5 server that has a pretty decent amount
of
capacity and are using a company's software to that backups are quick
and
slick. Cool, my life is so much easier. But thats it. . . we do NOT
have
an offsite backup, we do NOT have another inhouse SDLT tape backup
drive
and
the entire compliment of our backup resides ONLY on this single Network
Attached Raid 5 server. Sure, its housed in a closet somewhere, but
what
if
we had a catastrophic failure, how about a huge fire, or a plane
hitting
us.

The issue of tapes and offsite backups have little to do with one
another. Offsite backups are generally mandatory.

See, this "consultant" has "clients" in Manhattan who have their
offices
on
the 89th floor, but their Tapeless Backup servers in the basement.

Basement is ok but basement of a building three blocks away is better and
best of all is in a granite mine on a different continent....well no best
is
in quantum entangled storage in another galaxyg.

Errr, is
it me or do basements and the safes that may be contained therein get
buried
under rubble, or are there some group of IT specialists out there who
specialize in nothing but digging out backup servers from the rubble.

It's all a cost risk issue. There may be an inexpensive high bandwidth
link
easily available to the tapeless backup server in the basement but the
link
gets vastly more expensive as the distance grows. For instance generally
such a link within a building has no regulatory requirements except for
fire
code on the wires themselves. Run that same link to a building three
blocks
away may get into a whole bunch of regulated arenas and costs.

Tapeless backup is clearly the way to go in most situations.

As stupid as this question is, I need to basically find credible,
reliable
sources of published information that basically say its really, really,
really dumb to not archive stuff onto some type of medium tape or
otherwise.

You wont find any really smart such claims as tapes just aren't the
answer in many cases.

Backup has little to do with tape.
Backup criteria include:
Offsite. How far is the question?
How many independent(in both number and location) offsite backup copies
are
really needed? Many of the existant backup cycle strategies come from
tape
technology and are often just bunk for pure backup strategy.
How does backup strategy fit with the overall recovery strategy. If the
whole 90 story building collapses then do you have a recovery strategy
whereby the business can start again in two days in temp facilities in
NJ(was the building occupied when it collapsed?)? Maybe the backups in a
hard basement can be dug out faster than the business can start
functioning
again?

This Raid 5 server that we have at our company is not a bottomless pit,
but
the higher ups do not listen to me, only to the "director" who, along
with
their "consultant" has them believing that the system we currently have
in
place is relable.

If well designed it IS rather reliable.

Normally I would just shut my face since my life is a lot easier in
terms
of
backup, hell, set it and forget it is the name of the game. However, I
know
full well that if we ever got hit with a major disaster the "director"
would
be off on his vacation while the rest of us poor slobs had to restore
data
from God knows where. Oh, and if we were to get hit by a brand new,
spanking virus because the "director's" kid came in and did so, well,
our
Network Attached Storage pig would also suffer.

Not if well designed. The 'backup server' I've been talking about is a
server specifically designed for backups and nothing else and therefore
would be highly immue from such external attacks.

In short, I need some type of recommendation, in writing, in some type
of
white paper, from some type of credible sources, that SDLT tape backup
drives, at least for the purpose of long term archiving

Tapes have NEVER been considered a viable "long term archiving" medium.

are not "unreliable"
, they are only as "unreliable" as the poor work habits of the person
who
is
responsible for them.

Reliability is always the sum of all such factors and any backup strategy
should look more towards the least common denominator...Murphy....an
automatic corrollary to Murphiy's law is that tapes are unrelaible. The
proof of that is the incredible cycle strategies that have developed over
the years for tape backups. That comes from the fact that too frequently
the tape isn't usable for any one of a number of reasons.

Oh, and for the record, dear friends of mine swear by SDLT tape drives
and
the like, but I cannot bring an IT manager from CitiCorp into this
discussion because, since he is a friend of mine, his opinion is not
"neutral".

Tapes are on their way out in many situations(NOT ALL).

For all modest configuration servers and workstations I'm telling folks
to use removeable SATA HDs in trays with good carrying cases for offsite
backup. Firewire or USB2 is also viable.



--
--John
Reply to jclarke at ae tee tee global dot net
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)