Re: Tape/DVD Backup Suggestions?

You might try looking into DLT technology. DLT tape drives will give
you 80Gb storage with ~6-12MB/s throughput. They are an industry
standard supported by the heavyweights (HP/IBM/Dell) but a little more
pricey than your current DDS technology.

If you are looking for speed AND storage, I would suggest a combination
of disk and tape. Back you 'production' data to a separate 'backup'
drive then write the 'backup' drive contents to tape.

If you have money to burn and require very little downtime during
backup, place your data on a mirrored disk. During backup time split
the mirror and backup the stale mirror to tape. Once you are done,
re-sync the stale mirror to your production mirror (which can be done
online).

My CDN$.02,
K.

Tony Reina wrote:

> I'm looking into new ways of backing up the data in our lab, including
> the PostgreSQL database. Currently, we have a single DDS-2 tape drive
> capable of holding 8Gig compressed. However, it is slow (i.e. takes a
> day to backup about 40 Gig of information), spans multiple tapes, and
> makes it hard to find just a single file or two on the backup (i.e. I
> have to go through many tapes before I can find and extract one of two
> files). Our CDRW backups are easier to manage and relatively fast,
> but require dozens of CDRWs.
>
> Can anyone make suggestions on backup systems? I was thinking that
> some sort of DVD writing system would be good for accessing one or two
> files in the backup quickly. It would probably also complete backups
> faster. However, I think DVD's only hold a few Gigs on them. Are there
> systems like with these features that could handle say 20 Gigs per
> media?
>
> Thanks.
> -Tony
>
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--
Kurt Gunderson
Senior Programmer
Applications Development
Lottery Group
Canadian Bank Note Company, Limited
Email: kgunders(at)cbnlottery(dot)com
Phone:
613.225.6566 x326
Fax:
613.225.6651
http://www.cbnco.com/

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