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Hi guys,

I’m not familiar with Tape Storage drives. Our company decided that we should use Tape Storage platform to completely backup our data and take them out of the HQ. So i want a little help to chose a proper device to buy.

I have minimum expectations from the device because we want to cost as low as possible for that. For example if the storage consumes one LTO 6 or LTO 7 cartridge it would be great for me. So is there any suggestion what type, model or brand should i use?

Thank you

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What does “low cost” mean to you?

How much raw data do you have?

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How did they come to the determination that tape is what they want to use without understanding the options that are there technology wise?

What volume of data are you looking to archive off site?

How long will you be retaining it for?

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And are you from Iran and what brands do you have available over there ?

Other than a tape drive or tape library, do you have a solution (software) in mind and a backup strategy in mind, also do you have a existing backup infrastructure ?

Singa you are on a lower budget, maybe not LTO-7 for the mean time.

If you want an example of cost…for Asia, I have some numbers, all with 5yrs support…

Dell R340 server (RAID 1 SSD OSe + RAID 6 SATA HDD, 16GB RAM) : USD 7,000

Dell TL2000, iSCSI SAS Single LTO-6 drive : USD 9,000 (add USD 600 for 2nd tape drive)

LTO 6 media is approx USD 30 per piece, tape labels 1-60 for USD 30

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LTO is a good portable technology but as it is largely mechanical I would stick with the big players as the support contract is more important

So you would be looking for on site fix or same day replacement that kind of thing

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Well, quite :slight_smile:

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Only place I know of is Iron Mountain. They are a big player in the market (one of the worlds largest). Yhey have good support and a multitude of options. I d not know what caliber your company is in terms of size and data requirements. Iron Mountain is generally used more in the enterprise, but they have many options for SMB as well.

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Do you have the software suite you intend to drive the tape storage with already in place? If not, I’d try to establish this before selecting the hardware. And before selecting the software piece, you need to gather requirements for backup windows, RPOs, RTOs, retention times. All that good stuff. Perhaps all this is already in place, but from experience I see a lot of projects starting in the hardware end, leading to a much more difficult project than necessary.

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If the OP spent as much time as I’ve wasted trying to fix Tape related issues over the years he’d run screaming from this suggestion and plead with his supervisors to look at a better solution.

Yes, LTO is cheaper than bulk 2-4GB spinners that can be carried offsite. Tape is also prone to all kinds of other issues such as LTO units having mechanical problems that magically render previous backups as unuseable, getting stuck in cleaning cycles, cleaning tapes being defective causing head wear, SCSI / FC I/O errors more numerous and various than grains of sand on a beach, etc.

I’ve never had to ‘clean’ a hard drive interface, and never had problem mounting SATA drives on different machines. LTOs used on a specific tape unit can often refuse to mount on another LTO unit because of minor mechanical differences and other junk. Variances in quality of brands is another issue. If you elect tp go the LTO route buy two tape units and keep one in a box for when the first one fails and starts giving you problems.

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Use of a tape drive is going to require backup software. You may want to take a look at Retrospect, which includes support for LTO-6 and LTO-7 hardware for the backup of servers and workstations on your network. You can schedule your backup to run on a pretty flexible backup schedule. You can get a free trial from http://www.retrospect.com/try

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Hi Mohammad,

I’m not sure if you’ve had a chance yet to take a look at our Virtual Tape Library, but this is a very cost effective solution for your needs. Not only do we add an extra level of protection, but also speed up your backup window. This helps create fast and secure backups with no extra overhead to your production data. This can be a full replacement of your existing tape backups or just simply added to your current infrastructure to boost performance and redundancy.

If you would like to learn more or even trial the software you can follow this link: Virtual Tape Library (VTL) from StarWind

Thanks and please feel free to ask any questions!

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Why don’t you go for other storage methods like private and public cloud?

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Tape is great - don’t let anyone talk you out of it. People have declared it “dead” for years. That said, I think in most environments, tape should be looked as an an archive and/or retention tier. Not many are using exclusively tape for backup. If you’re data is important enough to archive offsite, you should have a local copy of your data to recover from.

HPE is one of the three developers of LTO and still a great option. Back when we announced LTO-7, I did a ChalkTalk giving an overview of our StoreEver tape family. Sounds like you’re thinking a single tape to do the job so a library sounds like it’s probably overkill for you but his video is a good overview:

Here’s our product page where you can narrow down what product would work for you. Focus on your capacity, host interface, and form factor and you should be led to some options for you.

Let me know if you have questions.

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Think about tape-in-cloud or having your final destination in some public cloud. Don’t worry, your data will hit tape eventually there and it won’t cost you arm and leg to store. + all maintenance issues will now belong to your ISP/Cloud Provider. You want tape low cost per TB stored but you don’t want to own actual hardware thing :wink: