Tape Backups

[maccebu]

Hi All,

has anybody here in the forum has experience on tape backups? which would you recommend?

We are opting for sony or exabyte using the interface FW800 but a lot of forums that i went into keep saying to avoid these two

We are having by the way retrospect server on our xserve doing all the backups from the work files to the client user home folder.

we are implementing now an offsite backup

[Magnus]

Sorry can't help you any with tapes. We opted for hard drive based backup with BRU for our office.

[maccebu]

just to update this thread.. we ended up and have been succesfull with REV drives (120GB) per tape and Retrospect 6.. We have been backing up Apple Mail/Entourage emails and our work files(adobe, keynote and doc files). The speed is fast it acts like normal USB2 drive easy to use and works well with OS X.

[michl]

I know tape backup solutions are still in use (see this report for instance)
but honestly with affordable hard disks in the Terabyte range and then
50GB dual layer Blu-ray discs already available
I'm wondering... why?

[maccebu]

For us we needed an offsite backup were we can copy files once a week from our server and store it in a different location other than the office, more of a disaster recovery thingy. This backup should be our last back file in case there will be a fire or calamity that destroys the office and we feel that Hard Disks are not suitable for this as it can be easily broken like when you drop it. We feel the same for the CD's as it has limited data sizes on it - the maximum it can store is 50GB i think (what if you back up like more than terabytes of data that's a lot of CD's). Tapes can go 100GB - 300GB or more.

We have also online backup that uses Hard Disks that will back up files from the server every night useful when retrieving files that are cause by user error like accidental file deletion/overwrite.

It all depends on the situation and the purpose why we need to backup..

[fangpyre]

I agree with maccebu.
They feel outdated, but they are still the best.
They are more durable and cheaper than most solutions.
And the speed compared to BluRay is incomparable.

[dandantheitman]

Tapes have a tendency to fail. So if you have implement a tape back up solution then I recommend that once every 1 or 3 months you perform a restore to ensure that the tapes are still viable.

If you want to get really serious about your back ups. Take a look at your data as a whole and divide it into several groups: Mission Critical, accessed frequently and accessed none frequently. The stuff that is accessed infrequently and frequently you leave to tapes. Mission critical stuff you back up to both to tape as well as something you can restore quickly from such as a local hard drive platter.

Dan

[michl]

I also had bad experience with tapes, i.e. of old archives becoming unreadable.

That, or the backup device itself is dead and cannot be replaced, new ones cannot read old tape format. But that is for long term archival...

Thanks for the suggestions anyway, very useful. I agree one has to examine closely how the data and the backups are being used, before devising a good strategy. Mixed is best.