Tape storage, what's the word?

ubersonic · 9 Sep 2015 at 15:41

Haven't seen the iSCSI versions, just the USB2/3 and SATA ones.

This one is an internal USB3.0 drive but the server it's gone in only has native USB2.0 (actually has a USB port on the MB specially for an RDX drive) however if that turns out to be a bottleneck in the future I can just drop in a USB 3.0 PCIe card.

From all the reading up on it I have done it should work much the same as tape did, with the one key difference that with the tapes the next tape into the rotation went into the drive every night and it ran a nightly backup. You can do that with RDX but I plan to use it in continuous protection mode so it's constantly syncing, that way when the cartridges are swapped every night the one being removed will already be an up to date backup.

Armageus · 9 Sep 2015 at 15:57

ubersonic said:
This one is an internal USB3.0 drive but the server it's gone in only has native USB2.0 (actually has a USB port on the MB specially for an RDX drive) however if that turns out to be a bottleneck in the future I can just drop in a USB 3.0 PCIe card.

Think USB2.0 will be a bottleneck and USB3.0 card compatibility with HP servers is apparently mixed (some work, and in the latest servers the fans ramp up with non-hp cards).

I did a bit of looking at this, as was thinking of setting up a "staging" server to consolidate my backups and then direct connect a RDX drive via USB - but seems USB3.0 and servers is almost a no go, hence the mention of an iSCSI one.

Have bit the bullet and ordered a Tanberg USB one and some media which should be here tomorrow. Will give me a lot more capacity than the USB Flash drives I was using, and opens up the option of extra backups of other data less crucial data with the larger 2TB media.

Trying to move things to a more "enterprise" or "best practice" way of working, in a company where the I.T. budget has been strangled for too many years. Next on my list will be to get some proper backup software, but that's a job for another thread!

ubersonic · 9 Sep 2015 at 16:44

Armageus said:
Think USB2.0 will be a bottleneck and USB3.0 card compatibility with HP servers is apparently mixed (some work, and in the latest servers the fans ramp up with non-hp cards).

From what I have read the Fujitsu S26361-F3749-L501 card should work fine with my HP kit and it's a quality card (It's actually designed/marketed for their Primergy servers). From what I have seen the fans supplying air to the PCI channels ramp up anyway as long as there's a card there to cool (they do with my HP Storageworks P410 anyway).

Armageus said:
Trying to move things to a more "enterprise" or "best practice" way of working, in a company where the I.T. budget has been strangled for too many years. Next on my list will be to get some proper backup software, but that's a job for another thread!

RDX drives are compatible with Backup Exec but IIRC it cannot manage the media (just sees the drive as an external backup drive target and doesn't know if the cartridge has been changed or not). But the included software is capable of doing schedules or continuous backups of whatever system/drives/folders you tell it too. You can also boot from the included disc to do a bare metal restore from a cartridge.

Phil2008 · 9 Sep 2015 at 17:39

So Im guessing tape is more reliable then a hdd for backing up then, because the usb device is over £100 before you start?

nutcase · 9 Sep 2015 at 19:48

USB 2 is painfully slow - but the SATA/USB 3 are fine.

ubersonic · 10 Sep 2015 at 09:30

Phil2008 said:
So Im guessing tape is more reliable then a hdd for backing up then, because the usb device is over £100 before you start?

Nobody can really say for sure without a crystal ball. According to their specifications RDX cartridges can be dropped from 1 meter onto a concrete floor without damage, and have a shelf life of 30+ years, however the latter isn't really testable without access to a DeLorean. From what people have said LTO is quite physically durable too and is also supposed to last 30 years.

As far as the drives go the RDX drive will be significantly more reliable as it has hardly any parts to fail (it's essentially just a glorified SATA caddy system with mechanised ejection). The LTO drive on the other hand has drive heads and many moving parts.

nutcase_1uk said:
USB 2 is painfully slow - but the SATA/USB 3 are fine.

Yeah the is quite a difference in USB3 mode lol (I wouldn't say painful for nightly backups though, it's still a notable improvement over SCSI SDLT):

USB 2.0: up to 25MB/s
SATA: up to 45MB/s
USB 3.0: up to 230MB/s

nutcase · 10 Sep 2015 at 13:41

We have two drives at work - one runs a 500GB overnight using USB2 the other 1TB using USB 3 - works for us, so yes overnight USB 2 for 500GB is fine, but we were overunning on the 1TBs hence buying a new drive.

Armageus · 10 Sep 2015 at 14:09

ubersonic said:
USB 3.0: up to 230MB/s

The USB3.0 figure is only achievable with the SSD based media though.

Still waiting for my drive to turn up (a 2TB cartridge has and is sat on my desk waiting), but will try and do some benchmarks when it does.

ubersonic · 10 Sep 2015 at 14:20

Armageus said:
The USB3.0 figure is only achievable with the SSD based media though.

True, when backing up from RAID you will be limited mainly by the speed of the drive in the RDX cartridge.

Armageus · 10 Sep 2015 at 15:43

Drive and media arrived:

Backed up same files I would normally back up to Flash Drive:

2690 Dirs / 37723 Files - 52.703 GB Total - 18 Minutes 32 Seconds

48.5MB/s and that was via USB3.0, source drive was a standard 3TB SATA Drive.

(Flash drive was taking 2.5 times longer to do a weekly differential against the same data set)