OT: Tape less Backup System

[Jay R. Ashworth]

On Fri, Jan 21, 2005 at 10:43:32AM -0500, Doug Luurs wrote:
> We current do all our backups to tape, and it seems to be getting more
> and more Costly every time I need more tape space. (And tapes being
> prone to failure more Often then not)
>
> Does anyone have a UNITRENDS D2D Backup System running.
>
> ( http://www.unitrends.com/appliancetechnologies.php?id=8 )
>
> My company is looking at their DPU 5000 model, and am looking for Any
> comments / Warnings about them.

So, um, how do you take one of *those* off-site?

The major problem with spinning backups is that they're *spinning*: a tape,
in a storage box, is about 4 orders of magnitude less likely to fail than a
spinning hard drive -- much less that you *multiply* the MTBF's to get the
overall failure rate on a JBOD.  It's a little better on a RAID, of course,
but still nowhere near tape.

And it's easier to *train* tape, too.

Cheers,
-- jra
-- 
Jay R. Ashworth                                                jra at baylink.com
Designer                          Baylink                             RFC 2100
Ashworth & Associates        The Things I Think                        '87 e24
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      If you can read this... thank a system adminstrator.  Or two.  --me