In my real world usage backup to disk at best was only as fast as backup
to tape. As you stated, for me the bottleneck was copper Gig NICs'.
Using LTO2 drives on a FC Library I easily sustain write speeds of 50-70
MB/sec and burst up to the max (80MB). On our LTO2 drives I stuff
500-800GB per tape (DB backups) and on our LTO3 drives I stuff 1TB to
2.4TB per tape (again DB backups). We will be going to LTO4 for security
compliance purposes to use hardware encryption. Our Library and the
drives are all FC attached to a SAN. The heavy hitter clients (DB
Servers) will be FC attached storage nodes backing up directly to the
Library. I get the best performance as you have stated many times in the
past by sending as much data as I can to 1 drive. One drive for File
systems and one drive for Database backups. 

That said I agree with your thread. My only problem is that backup isn't
"sexy" and is generally treated as the step child (unless something
needs restored) so any money spent requires a hard sell. I have been
promised for years that I'll get Storage space on the SAN to do disk to
disk then disk to tape but that has yet to happen. I backup 7-12 TB
daily using 4 Networker Servers that simply rock, day in and day out.

Thanks,

Dana

-----Original Message-----
From: EMC NetWorker discussion [mailto:NETWORKER AT LISTSERV.TEMPLE DOT EDU] On
Behalf Of Curtis Preston
Sent: Saturday, January 12, 2008 12:29 AM
To: NETWORKER AT LISTSERV.TEMPLE DOT EDU
Subject: Re: Upgrade from 7.2 to 7.3.3

And I stand by that presentation! ;)

Notice I did not say tape is dead.  I said tape-only backup systems are
dead.  The difference in speed between most backups and most tape drives
is too far.  IMHO, you must go to disk first to do it right.  And now
that dedupe is here and real, you can use disk for more than staging --
you can hold all onsite backups on disk for about the same cost as doing
it on tape.

---
W. Curtis Preston
Backup Blog @ www.backupcentral.com
VP Data Protection, GlassHouse Technologies 

-----Original Message-----
From: EMC NetWorker discussion [mailto:NETWORKER AT LISTSERV.TEMPLE DOT EDU] On
Behalf Of David Magda
Sent: Tuesday, January 08, 2008 5:31 PM
To: NETWORKER AT LISTSERV.TEMPLE DOT EDU
Subject: Re: [Networker] Upgrade from 7.2 to 7.3.3

At LISA '06 W. Curtis Preston gave a presentation called "Seriously,  
Tape-Only Backup Systems Are Dead".

It's available online at USENIX's site:

        http://www.usenix.org/event/lisa06/tech/#friday

Though it may be of interest to the list.

On Jan 8, 2008, at 12:05, Matthew Huff wrote:
>
> Yep.
>
> We have a high-bandwidth, low latency network with enough clients and
> data to keep it going, although we will probably go from 6 x LTO-2  
> to 4
> x LTO-4.
>
> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Teresa Biehler [mailto:tpbsys AT rit DOT edu]
>> Sent: Tuesday, January 08, 2008 12:01 PM
>> To: EMC NetWorker discussion; Matthew Huff
>> Subject: RE: [Networker] Upgrade from 7.2 to 7.3.3
>>
>> How do you plan to feed the LTO-4 tapes enough data to keep them busy
>> without using staging?

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