well right now i have no funding what so ever im trying to scrape together a few machines. being from houston and going to a private institute there i have had my ins and outs with higher education IT. i agree with what you are saying and now it makes totally perfect sense. also in addition to off siting the tapes from last week couldnt you take a drive out of your raid array and store them in an off site location then reuse again for a back up down the road?
On 7/7/08, Gerry Creager <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Jon Aquilina wrote: > >> in my case where money isnt an issue wouldnt it be better for me to build >> a raid backup array? i understand your reasoning. im still studying and >> fairly new in the higher education of IT so when i start working ill keep >> what you mentioned to heart. only problem is that where i am located in >> europe things are more expensive here. another random idea why not create a >> raided backup array backed up to tape? is it possible to do a tape back up >> of data thata being written to disk instantly >> > > It's absolutely possible to do a mirrored write to RAID spinning media and > also to tape. In a perfect world, where I don't have budget constraints, > that's how I'd achieve my third tier of backup. The real reason we bother > with tiered storage and multiple copies, however, remains "disaster > recovery". One theory says that simply having two copies in the data center > is enough. Experience teaches that, for true disaster recovery, one needs a > pretty recent off-site copy, that is unlikely to be disrupted by an event in > one locale. I know of one company that mirrors disks over 100 miles from > their r&d/corporate offices via multiple 10gigabit paths, with two feeds for > power, a diesel generator, and a battery plant to keep things running. In > their main site, they have disk and tape. Offsite, they have another disk > copy. And last week's tapes. > > In higher-education IT, one tends to have a lot of budget constraints. > Funding agencies want accountability and don't seem to just give us hardware > dollars for the asking, although it often seems that way when someone who's > not seeking said funding, watches the process. Therefore, money IS a > problem and we have to determine the best way to keep things going while > optimizing expenses. > > Different approaches don't mean we're disagreeing with you, however. MY > primary backup is spinning (RAID) disk. I'd like to expand to LTO tape with > robotics but my funding agencies have not yet seen the wisdom of this, and > think my use of disk is just fine. Until we have a problem (and problems > are almost guaranteed) and get in trouble for not having incorporated tape > (or another, different, technology) in our backup plan, I don't expect to > see funds for it. In fact, when we do get in trouble, I see us redirecting > already allocated funds rather than getting new funds, to accomplish this. > Just understand that redirecting funding for a new hardware implementation > requires sponsor approval, and if they don't understand "Why?" it can get > messy. > > gerry > > On Mon, Jul 7, 2008 at 5:05 AM, Steve Cousins <[EMAIL PROTECTED]<mailto: >> [EMAIL PROTECTED]>> wrote: >> >> >> From: "Jon Aquilina" >> this is slightly off topic but im just wondering why spend >> thousands of >> dollars when u can just setup another server and backup >> everything to a >> raided hard drive array? >> >> >> Another RAID system helps but only if it is located somewhere else. >> The main reason we backup is for disaster recovery. One nice thing >> about tape is that you can take the tapes to another location easily >> or put them in a fire safe. >> >> Another reason is that RAID systems don't scale up as easily as a >> tape system. Our library has two 15 tape magazines that can be >> removed and replaced. It costs about $750 to buy 15 new tapes plus a >> magazine. That's not too bad for 6 TB of storage (uncompressed, with >> HW compression we get about 9 TB). Plus it takes practically no time >> to start using it. >> >> The library wasn't really that expensive when we bought it either. >> Somewhere around $7500. At the time we bought that we were using 400 >> GB drives in our RAID systems at $300 each. To build a server with 5 >> TiB (usable) of RAID storage at the time was about $7000. The tapes >> were more expensive then (about $100 each) but for about $10,500 we >> got 12 TB of tape storage (library plus 30 tapes). To get roughly >> the same of disk storage would have been about $14K. So right off >> the bat tape was cheaper. Plus it is so much easier to manage. I >> like the idea of snapshots and using rsync plus links is a crafty >> idea but I sleep better knowing that I have a "real" (one that I can >> carry around) backup of our data in our safe. >> >> Steve >> >> >> >> >> -- >> Jonathan Aquilina >> >> >> ------------------------------------------------------------------------ >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Beowulf mailing list, Beowulf@beowulf.org >> To change your subscription (digest mode or unsubscribe) visit >> http://www.beowulf.org/mailman/listinfo/beowulf >> > > -- > Gerry Creager -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Texas Mesonet -- AATLT, Texas A&M University > Cell: 979.229.5301 Office: 979.458.4020 FAX: 979.862.3983 > Office: 1700 Research Parkway Ste 160, TAMU, College Station, TX 77843 > -- Jonathan Aquilina
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