Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion The Water Cooler Fellow IT Geeks: Opinions wanted.

Do any of you have experience and/or opinions on the pros and cons of LTO-3 Ultrium or SDLT tape libraries/drives/media? I'm working out next years budget and we do need an ATL to replace the unwieldy task of running individual backups on 15 different servers using DAT72. Either of those formats give us capacity far beyond our current needs but a couple of years out we will need that kind of capacity as our "paperless office" initiative matures and expands and as we add more services for our members (credit union). So anyway, I've sketched in an Overland LTO-3 Ultrium library with 1 12-tape drive and space for an additional 12-tape drive. Sound good? Please let me know what you think.

I don't have much experience with SDLT, but I love LTOs. Very, very, very fast, and seemingly quite reliable. I haven't had one fail yet--unlike certain other media I could name (DAT, ahem...)

Yeah, it's pretty alarming how often DAT tapes fail. Almost as alarming as the fact that my predecessors here kept adding servers and services and never developed an enterprise storage and backup plan.

I know the feeling.

We have been using SDLT320 drives for several years now and not one problem so far. I have had faulty tapes, but I send them back and Maxell keeps replacing them.

I have limited experience with LTO, but understand that it is great. We went with SDLT for our library because we wanted backward read compatibility with our other sites DLT70 / DLT80 tapes.

Good info. In my case I'm making no attempt at compatibility with older tapes. If necessary the we can use the on-board DAT-72 drives to restore older data. And as those servers get EOL'd we'll pick up a DAT-72 external if we really think it's necessary.

BTW, I just got my new workstation in. Nice new Core-2 Duo with 2 19" LCDs. One of the few perks of moving from grunt to management. That and higher pay and having final say on the design of the enterprise systems almost make the endless meetings and paperwork worth it.

How many days after you moved to management did it take for your hair to develop points?

LOL

What is this "hair" you speak of?

Nah, it's not so bad. Having been a grunt for so long I don't think I'll turn into a "metrics Nazi" or an abuser of Dilbert-like underlings. I've worked in organizations where the "people upstairs" can only judge work in terms of their beloved metrics which have nothing to do with the quality of the work being done. We don't have a ticket system in place now and I won't be implementing one. Our organization had high marks for service from the other units within the company when I was hired and continues to have the same. I'm just here to rebuild and reorganize the infrastructure on which this concern runs into a modern, scalable, manageable system that can easily grow as we add branches and services. 5 years from now we'll have added 2 branches, moved another branch from leased space to owned space, and built and moved into a new Main Office from this 70-year-old barn we now inhabit. At that point I'll probably decide it's time to move on. If you look at this and guess I'm a start-up kinda guy, I am. I'll let the professional IS management types come and impose metrics and enjoy the benefits of the smooth-running system I built. That's why I left the last place as well. Coulda stayed and moved into a higher position there but the work I was interested in had already been done. Oh yeah, that and the C.S. degree plus 12 years experience = $$.