[Sunhelp] Tape library recommendations

[Bill Bradford]

On Thu, Sep 21, 2000 at 05:07:01PM -0500, Doug McLaren wrote:
> Sounds more like you got excessively expensive hardware.

Last place I worked bought a 160-tape DLT library with robotic
changer, etc.  (ATL P3000).  Unit was the size of two full racks
side-by-side, and rather impressive.  Took me the good part of
an afternoon just unpacking, barcode-labeling, and loading the
DLT tapes alone.  Just the tape library/changer cost around $155K.

> If somebody doesn't mind swapping 8 tapes or so to do a full backup,
> 300gb of data could be backed up with a single 40gb DLT drive.

Been there, done that, ick.

> After that, you may find that incrementals fit on a single tape
> (depending on your setup, of course.)
> I haven't priced DLT drives, but I imagine you can get such a drive
> for well under $3000.

Last DLT-4000 drive I bought was around $1200 external.  The DLT 
drive @ COMCO (Doug - you know what I'm talking about) ran $1500 used, 
and that was a good year and a half ago.

> You may want something that's will work with less human intervention,
> but you'll pay for it.  But they shouldn't cost $140k.
> Of course, you'll then need a system for this, and software, but none
> of that costs anywhere near $140k.

Good Enterprise-class "hands off" hardware and software costs LOTS
of money - the aforementioned $155K tape library, plus about $60K
worth of software to go along with it.. but this was backing up a 
number of Sun servers (with an average of about 50G each) and all
the NT boxes as well.

Bill

-- 
Bill Bradford * KD5LQR
  mrbill at mrbill.net
    Austin, TX