LTO tape drive experiences
by Red Squirrel from LinuxQuestions.org on (#6F1H1)
Toying with getting a LTO drive, probably LTO-6. Can get them for just a little over 1k shipped on Ebay as I check now, there's even a listing that comes with the SAS card and cable and a single tape so it's a nice package deal to get going.
I've read briefly on how they work, including LTFS, so I have a general idea. Basically I would probably want to stage my backups on some local fast storage like a raid 0 (don't really want to use SSDs due to wear as this would see lot of writes) and then generate a tar file, then write that file to the tape. I could create diff backups in separate tar files and write them to tape again later if there's space left. I would want an inventory system to know what's on what tape. (either through backup software or manually or whatever).
My current backup solution is individual hard drives that have a script on them, that script determines what backup job runs for that particular drive, each job is a predefined list of folders. The system is not very scalable since as those folders grow I need to start cutting back on the job so it does not fill the drive. I'm thinking of writing a program that will manage these backups better and span jobs across multiple drives so I can take advantage of even small (<1TB) drives, and handle retention etc. The tapes would be an extension of this, for longer term retention. Some would also be used for archiving data that will never change such as photos, they would be marked read only and just kept indefinitely. The data would still stay on the NAS and be part of the regular backups.
Overall I'm just curious to hear of anyone's experiences on doing this and if it worked out well, if it was worth it etc, and any gotchas I should know about. Chances are I would run the tape drive directly off my NAS. (a standard server box running Linux). I understand these want a fairly fast data pipe like 160MB/sec to keep it fed otherwise the tape has to stop to buffer then start again and if it has to do it a lot it's hard on the tape and the drive. Or can the motor vary the speed?
I've read briefly on how they work, including LTFS, so I have a general idea. Basically I would probably want to stage my backups on some local fast storage like a raid 0 (don't really want to use SSDs due to wear as this would see lot of writes) and then generate a tar file, then write that file to the tape. I could create diff backups in separate tar files and write them to tape again later if there's space left. I would want an inventory system to know what's on what tape. (either through backup software or manually or whatever).
My current backup solution is individual hard drives that have a script on them, that script determines what backup job runs for that particular drive, each job is a predefined list of folders. The system is not very scalable since as those folders grow I need to start cutting back on the job so it does not fill the drive. I'm thinking of writing a program that will manage these backups better and span jobs across multiple drives so I can take advantage of even small (<1TB) drives, and handle retention etc. The tapes would be an extension of this, for longer term retention. Some would also be used for archiving data that will never change such as photos, they would be marked read only and just kept indefinitely. The data would still stay on the NAS and be part of the regular backups.
Overall I'm just curious to hear of anyone's experiences on doing this and if it worked out well, if it was worth it etc, and any gotchas I should know about. Chances are I would run the tape drive directly off my NAS. (a standard server box running Linux). I understand these want a fairly fast data pipe like 160MB/sec to keep it fed otherwise the tape has to stop to buffer then start again and if it has to do it a lot it's hard on the tape and the drive. Or can the motor vary the speed?