🚀 go-pugleaf

Kharim Hogan (hogan@sound) wrote:
: 
: 
: Hi,
: 
: The faculty here has finally decided that it's time to 
: purchase a serious backup unit for our net.  At the 
: moment we have 6 NeXTs, a Sun and several Macintoshes
: with a total of 4.1 Gb of disk space.
: 
: I have to present several options at a meeting next
: week and would like to hear about what other people
: are using and what type of backup units you would
: recommend.  They are thinking of getting a DAT backup
: and are not sure yet how much they are willing to pay.
: 
: So what do you suggest, what are you using, where did
: you get your unit and how much was it are among some
: of the questions I'd like feedback on.  And if someone
: said to you, "you can get any backup unit you want",
: what would you go for?
: 
: Thanks for your help!


We have an exabyte 8200 which I loathe, and an HP 35480A which I love.
The HP has been much more reliable, is an order of magnitude faster to
retrieve files, and never goes wandering off onto cloud 9.

The DAT may not fit the entire 4.1 GB on a single tape, even if you
get 90 meter tapes and use hardware compression.  However, you probably
want to make separate backups of system vs user files anyway.

Example:  One of my users left last summer, so I deleted her account.
Today my boss needs some of her files.  So, I look up in UserArchives, and
find that her files were last on the tape labeled Nov-92-Archive, and that
they are on file 23 of that tape.

Throw the tape in the drive.
         

su boss
cd /u/scratch
setenv TAPE /dev/nrst0
mt fsf 23
gnutar -xvb16
mt offline

3 minutes later her 25 mb of files are back.  Another ten minutes and
the boss has picked out the ones wanted, and the remainder are deleted.	



--
=> Sherwood Botsford                   sherwood@space.ualberta.ca <= 
=> University of Alberta         Lab Manager, Space Physics Group <=         
=> tel:403 492-3713                             fax: 403 492-4256 <=