[NTLUG:Discuss] Tape Drive Recommendation

[Chris Cox]

clayramsey1 at comcast.net wrote:
> Chris - the 4TB figure is interesting to me.....
> 
> how do you set that up given the 2TB capacity of the 2.4 kernel?  Are you running 2.6 already?
> 

...

1. So... there's a 2TB limit on block devices (32bit 2.4 kernel)

2. Multiple block devices can be placed into a VG for LVM use...

3. ...Allowing the creation of filesystems up to their maximum
    sizes* (16TB I believe for reiserfs and ext3... though I think
    with larger extents, you can get ext3 to do 32TB?).  *Though
    there is a 2TB LV limit with LVM1 (goes away with LVM2).

4. You will need Large File Support (present in all contemporary
    2.4's) to create individual files larger than 2G.

5. You'll need to look at archival alternatives (things other than
    tar) if you need to backup seriously large files.  We've
    been using star.

2.6 will end the device block limit (1) and LVM2 ends the LV
limit (3).  So in theory, using LVM2 (haven't tried this), you
don't have to use 2.6 in order to create filesystems over 2TB
in size.







> 
>>Preston wrote:
>>
>>>Hello all,
>>>
>>>I have always used DDS4 tape drives in the past with good success and 
>>>was wondering if anyone had any experiences, good or bad, with any other 
>>>tape formats.  Speed does not matter that much (the backups will be run 
>>>in the middle of the night by a cron job), but cost and reliability are 
>>>important factors.  20GB is enough space for now (current backups are 
>>>only ~5 GB with bz2 compression) and should be for a while, but bigger 
>>>is always better ;)  One reason I have always stuck with DDS tape drives 
>>>in the past is that the protocol has been around for a long time and 
>>>therefore tapes, drivers, etc. are easy to find.   I don't want to get 
>>>stuck with a tape standard that is dropped in a year or two and be 
>>>unable to find tapes.
>>>Thanks for your help.
>>
>>We run LTO at the office now.  We use a home grown Linux based
>>system we developed.  It uses rsync with the clients to a large
>>4TB disk cache (daily snapshots) and weekly archival to an
>>LTO library.  We use mtx ... the rest is just normal SCSI
>>tape stuff.
>>
>>At home I like OnStream... but they went belly-up (sad).
>>I have an extra OnStream 50G ADR internal SCSI unit
>>sitting around right now.... but you might not be interested
>>since the technology is essentially dead.  Good performance
>>for a cheap price though.  I'll have the 120G version with
>>my machine at the Linux Fair.
>>
>>
>>_______________________________________________
>>https://ntlug.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> https://ntlug.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
> 
>