Disturbing Trends with Tape Drives and Backup Software

I recently had a Dell DLT autoloader die on me and had to replace the
system. I had hoped the trends of tape backup systems and software
would have improved with time no such luck.

I purchased an Exabyte Magnum 1x7 LTO 3 autoloader to replace the old
Dell drive and to give us more backup capacity. If you are not
familiar with this very expensive little gem, it may be because it is
fairly new or it may be because you looked and the $7k price tag and
moved on.

We have been running Veritas Backup Exec for a few years and I have no
real complaints. It works well and hopefully you will never need tech
support.

Here are a few things that I have run across that distrub me:

1. Device Drivers for most tape systems are still aquired from backup
software companies who have nothing to do with the tape systems. What
happened to plug and play advancements?

2. Tech support for manufacturers is disapearing and the problems with
their stuff is increasing.

It looks as if I will have to wait for new drivers to be produced and
some very expensive hardware will have to sit around till the drivers
are ready. Unfortunately, Veritas and Exabyte have no email suppprt
for US customers and they are closed over the holiday when we are
trying to get some network system work done. High end products often
provide the same poor quality support as the cheap junk.

wrote:
I recently had a Dell DLT autoloader die on me and had to replace the
system. I had hoped the trends of tape backup systems and software
would have improved with time no such luck.

I purchased an Exabyte Magnum 1x7 LTO 3 autoloader to replace the old
Dell drive and to give us more backup capacity. If you are not
familiar with this very expensive little gem, it may be because it is
fairly new or it may be because you looked and the $7k price tag and
moved on.

We have been running Veritas Backup Exec for a few years and I have no
real complaints. It works well and hopefully you will never need tech
support.

Here are a few things that I have run across that distrub me:

1. Device Drivers for most tape systems are still aquired from backup
software companies who have nothing to do with the tape systems. What
happened to plug and play advancements?

Sad to hear about that Dell autoloader. Care to share how old and the
model?

Not sure I follow you on the plug and play driver. I would rather have
a tape driver optimized for my backup application from the backup
company than a generic one from the OS company.

However, if it works well who provides the driver becomes a moot
point, IMO.

wrote:
2. Tech support for manufacturers is disapearing and the problems with
their stuff is increasing.

It looks as if I will have to wait for new drivers to be produced and
some very expensive hardware will have to sit around till the drivers
are ready. Unfortunately, Veritas and Exabyte have no email suppprt
for US customers and they are closed over the holiday when we are
trying to get some network system work done. High end products often
provide the same poor quality support as the cheap junk.

Are you saying that Veritas BE doesn't have a driver for the Magnum?
That's odd, that autoloader has been around for a while.

Anyway if it's true I understand your comment about plug&play in the
previous message. It's a bummer finding out after buying the stuff...

"Spindle" wrote in message
oups.com...

wrote:
2. Tech support for manufacturers is disapearing and the problems with
their stuff is increasing.

It looks as if I will have to wait for new drivers to be produced and
some very expensive hardware will have to sit around till the drivers
are ready. Unfortunately, Veritas and Exabyte have no email suppprt
for US customers and they are closed over the holiday when we are
trying to get some network system work done. High end products often
provide the same poor quality support as the cheap junk.

Are you saying that Veritas BE doesn't have a driver for the Magnum?
That's odd, that autoloader has been around for a while.

Anyway if it's true I understand your comment about plug&play in the
previous message. It's a bummer finding out after buying the stuff...


I'll ask around to see if Veritas BE supports the Magnum. If not, then it's
usually quite easy to make an Exabyte library emulate an earlier model that
the software does know about. Note that it's the software vendor that needs
to add support for a particular library, and there's little that a hardware
vendor can do to make that happen (besides forking over a lot of money..).
You can also select other backup software that supports the Magnum, such as
Bakbone's NetVault.

As for support, if you value 24x7 availability then your best bet is to get
a support contract. That's what your server vendor asks you to do, so why
would any other hardware vendor be different?

Rob

Not sure I follow you on the plug and play driver. I would rather have
a tape driver optimized for my backup application from the backup
company than a generic one from the OS company.

In Windows, the only goal of the tape driver is to convert the tape IOCTLs to
SCSI CDBs. I suspect same is in UNIXen.

--
Maxim Shatskih, Windows DDK MVP
StorageCraft Corporation

http://www.storagecraft.com

"Maxim S. Shatskih" writes:

Not sure I follow you on the plug and play driver. I would rather
have a tape driver optimized for my backup application from the
backup company than a generic one from the OS company.

In Windows, the only goal of the tape driver is to convert the tape
IOCTLs to SCSI CDBs. I suspect same is in UNIXen.

Personally I would only buy tape drives that were SCSI (if I had the
choice, which isn't always true because of budgetary and political
reasons). The commands are standardized for both tape drives and
changers / robots with SCSI and it's a lot less hassle.

--
David Magda dmagda at ee.ryerson.ca
Because the innovator has for enemies all those who have done well under
the old conditions, and lukewarm defenders in those who may do well
under the new. -- Niccolo Machiavelli, _The Prince_, Chapter VI

In Windows, the only goal of the tape driver is to convert the tape
IOCTLs to SCSI CDBs. I suspect same is in UNIXen.

Personally I would only buy tape drives that were SCSI (if I had the
choice, which isn't always true because of budgetary and political
reasons). The commands are standardized for both tape drives and
changers / robots with SCSI and it's a lot less hassle.

Yes, but there are subtle differences, and thus the need in a tape driver -
which is a translator from IOCTLs to SCSI commands.

Some backup software can issue its own raw SCSI commands and thus bypass the
OS's tape driver (but not the OS's SCSI stack).

--
Maxim Shatskih, Windows DDK MVP
StorageCraft Corporation

http://www.storagecraft.com

"Maxim S. Shatskih" writes:
Yes, but there are subtle differences, and thus the need in a tape driver -
which is a translator from IOCTLs to SCSI commands.

Right. Also, many interesting features are often vendor-unique; for
instance, accessing the MIC in AIT tapes, managing WORM tapes, or
handling pass-thru ports between tape libraries. So either the tape
driver or a module in the backup (or other tape-using) software needs
to know a bit more about the hardware than the OS vendor is likely to
be interested in providing/verifying.

Anton

In the 1980's we all got to know the problem called stiction.

The lubricant inside the disks got sticky with age, and the
disk refused to start up. It could be helped along with a little
nudge around the time you applied power.

With the nineties came better lubricants and production
processes, and the problem was gone. Until last week.

Now I have seen the very same symptoms on two very different cheap
disks, one a 60MB 2.5" 5400 RPM laptop disk, around 8 months old, and
a 160MB 7200 RPM 3.5" ATA disk less than 6 months old. I have tested
both in my little lab machine, and they both behave as stiction disks.

Apply power, and they just make a little whirr without starting up.
Apply a little twist in the plane of the spin, and they start
right up. No errors, can backup, format etc; until it spins
down and get cold again. The laptop disk has it in a very
reproducible form.

I was a little surprised to see this; so I asked a few sysadmin
friends. Now they report a handful of disks with these symptoms, and
some were thankful for the tip to spin them up; as some were
laptop disks for users without too much backup of their data.

I will withhold the names of the manufacturers from public
view until I have a statistically significant sample.


Now I ask the question to a larger audience. Is this just some
freak occurrence, or is it a pattern.

In short, is stiction back?

-- mrr