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?<br>
<br>
<div><span class="gmail_quote">On 7/7/08, <b class="gmail_sendername">Gerry Creager</b> <<a href="mailto:gerry.creager@tamu.edu">gerry.creager@tamu.edu</a>> wrote:</span>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="PADDING-LEFT: 1ex; MARGIN: 0px 0px 0px 0.8ex; BORDER-LEFT: #ccc 1px solid"><span class="q">Jon Aquilina wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="PADDING-LEFT: 1ex; MARGIN: 0px 0px 0px 0.8ex; BORDER-LEFT: #ccc 1px solid">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<br>
</blockquote><br></span>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.<br>
<br>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.<br>
<br>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.<br>
<span class="sg"><br>gerry<br><br></span>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="PADDING-LEFT: 1ex; MARGIN: 0px 0px 0px 0.8ex; BORDER-LEFT: #ccc 1px solid">
<div><span class="e" id="q_11afd48ececacf44_4">On Mon, Jul 7, 2008 at 5:05 AM, Steve Cousins <<a onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)" href="mailto:cousins@umit.maine.edu" target="_blank">cousins@umit.maine.edu</a> <mailto:<a onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)" href="mailto:cousins@umit.maine.edu" target="_blank">cousins@umit.maine.edu</a>>> wrote:<br>
<br><br> From: "Jon Aquilina"<br> this is slightly off topic but im just wondering why spend<br> thousands of<br> dollars when u can just setup another server and backup<br> everything to a<br>
raided hard drive array?<br><br><br> Another RAID system helps but only if it is located somewhere else.<br> The main reason we backup is for disaster recovery. One nice thing<br> about tape is that you can take the tapes to another location easily<br>
or put them in a fire safe.<br><br> Another reason is that RAID systems don't scale up as easily as a<br> tape system. Our library has two 15 tape magazines that can be<br> removed and replaced. It costs about $750 to buy 15 new tapes plus a<br>
magazine. That's not too bad for 6 TB of storage (uncompressed, with<br> HW compression we get about 9 TB). Plus it takes practically no time<br> to start using it.<br><br> The library wasn't really that expensive when we bought it either.<br>
Somewhere around $7500. At the time we bought that we were using 400<br> GB drives in our RAID systems at $300 each. To build a server with 5<br> TiB (usable) of RAID storage at the time was about $7000. The tapes<br>
were more expensive then (about $100 each) but for about $10,500 we<br> got 12 TB of tape storage (library plus 30 tapes). To get roughly<br> the same of disk storage would have been about $14K. So right off<br> the bat tape was cheaper. Plus it is so much easier to manage. I<br>
like the idea of snapshots and using rsync plus links is a crafty<br> idea but I sleep better knowing that I have a "real" (one that I can<br> carry around) backup of our data in our safe.<br><br> Steve<br>
<br><br><br><br>-- <br>Jonathan Aquilina<br><br><br></span></div><span class="q">------------------------------------------------------------------------<br><br>_______________________________________________<br>Beowulf mailing list, <a onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)" href="mailto:Beowulf@beowulf.org" target="_blank">Beowulf@beowulf.org</a><br>
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</span></blockquote>
<div><span class="e" id="q_11afd48ececacf44_7"><br>-- <br>Gerry Creager -- <a onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)" href="mailto:gerry.creager@tamu.edu" target="_blank">gerry.creager@tamu.edu</a><br>Texas Mesonet -- AATLT, Texas A&M University <br>
Cell: 979.229.5301 Office: 979.458.4020 FAX: 979.862.3983<br>Office: 1700 Research Parkway Ste 160, TAMU, College Station, TX 77843<br></span></div></blockquote></div><br><br clear="all"><br>-- <br>Jonathan Aquilina