Tapeless backup environments?

Yesterday our director said that he doesn’t intend to ever upgrade existing STK L700 because eventually we’ll go tapeless as that is what the industry is doing. The idea being we’d have our disk backup devices here (e.g. Data Domain) and transfer to offsite storage to another disk device so as to eliminate the need for ever transporting tapes.

It made me wonder if anyone was actually doing the above already or was planning to do so?

On Fri, 21 Sep 2007, Jeff Lightner wrote:

[quote]Yesterday our director said that he doesn't intend to ever upgrade
existing STK L700 because eventually we'll go tapeless as that is what
the industry is doing. The idea being we'd have our disk backup
devices here (e.g. Data Domain) and transfer to offsite storage to
another disk device so as to eliminate the need for ever transporting
tapes.

It made me wonder if anyone was actually doing the above already or was
planning to do so?

[/quote]
That seems to be the way people are 'thinking' but the bottom line is disk
still is not cheaper than LTO-3 tape and there are a lot of advantages to
tape; however, convicing management of this is an uphill battle.

Justin.
_______________________________________________
Veritas-bu maillist - Veritas-bu < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
http://mailman.eng.auburn.edu/mailman/listinfo/veritas-bu

Discovery Channel

=============================
Carl Stehman
IT Distributed Services Team
Pepco Holdings, Inc.
202-331-6619
Pager 301-765-2703
ckstehman < at > pepco.com

[b]"Jeff Lightner" <jlightner < at > water.com>[/b]
Sent by: veritas-bu-bounces < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
09/21/2007 09:57 AM To
<veritas-bu < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu> cc
Subject
[Veritas-bu] Tapeless backup environments?

Yesterday our director said that he doesn&#8217;t intend to ever upgrade existing STK L700 because eventually we&#8217;ll go tapeless as that is what the industry is doing. The idea being we&#8217;d have our disk backup devices here (e.g. Data Domain) and transfer to offsite storage to another disk device so as to eliminate the need for ever transporting tapes.
It made me wonder if anyone was actually doing the above already or was planning to do so?_______________________________________________
Veritas-bu maillist - Veritas-bu < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
http://mailman.eng.auburn.edu/mailman/listinfo/veritas-bu

This Email message and any attachment may contain information that is proprietary, legally privileged, confidential and/or subject to copyright belonging to Pepco Holdings, Inc. or its affiliates ("PHI"). This Email is intended solely for the use of the person(s) to which it is addressed. If you are not an intended recipient, or the employee or agent responsible for delivery of this Email to the intended recipient(s), you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution or copying of this Email is strictly prohibited. If you have received this message in error, please immediately notify the sender and permanently delete this Email and any copies. PHI policies expressly prohibit employees from making defamatory or offensive statements and infringing any copyright or any other legal right by Email communication. PHI will not accept any liability in respect of such communications.

Disk is not cheaper? You've done a cost analysis?

Not saying you're wrong and I haven't done an analysis but I'd be
surprised if disks didn't actually work out to be cheaper over time:

1) Tapes age/break - We buy on average several hundred tapes a year -
support on a disk array for failing disks may or may not be more
expensive.

2) Transport/storage - We have to pay for offsite storage and transfer -
it seems just putting an array in offsite facility would eliminate the
need for transportation (in trucks) cost. Of course there would be cost
in the data transfer disk to disk but since everyone seems to have
connectivity over the internet it might be possible to do this using a
B2B link rather than via dedicated circuits.

3) Labor cost in dealing with mechanical failures of robots. This one
is hidden in salary but every time I have to work on a robot it means I
can't be working on something else. While disk drives fail it doesn't
seem to happen nearly as often as having to fish a tape out of a drive
or the tape drive itself having failed.

-----Original Message-----
From: Justin Piszcz [mailto]
Sent: Friday, September 21, 2007 10:08 AM
To: Jeff Lightner
Cc: veritas-bu < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
Subject: Re: [Veritas-bu] Tapeless backup environments?

On Fri, 21 Sep 2007, Jeff Lightner wrote:

[quote]Yesterday our director said that he doesn't intend to ever upgrade
existing STK L700 because eventually we'll go tapeless as that is what
the industry is doing. The idea being we'd have our disk backup
devices here (e.g. Data Domain) and transfer to offsite storage to
another disk device so as to eliminate the need for ever transporting
tapes.

It made me wonder if anyone was actually doing the above already or
[/quote]was
[quote]planning to do so?

[/quote]
That seems to be the way people are 'thinking' but the bottom line is
disk
still is not cheaper than LTO-3 tape and there are a lot of advantages
to
tape; however, convicing management of this is an uphill battle.

Justin.
----------------------------------

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----------------------------------

_______________________________________________
Veritas-bu maillist - Veritas-bu < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
http://mailman.eng.auburn.edu/mailman/listinfo/veritas-bu

I believe disks are 33c/gigabyte and tapes are 3-9cents/gigabyte or even
cheaper, I do not remember the exact figures, but someone I know has done
a cost analysis and tapes were by far cheaper. Also something that nobody
calculates is the cost of power to keep disks spinning.

Justin.

On Fri, 21 Sep 2007, Jeff Lightner wrote:

[quote]Disk is not cheaper? You've done a cost analysis?

Not saying you're wrong and I haven't done an analysis but I'd be
surprised if disks didn't actually work out to be cheaper over time:

1) Tapes age/break - We buy on average several hundred tapes a year -
support on a disk array for failing disks may or may not be more
expensive.

2) Transport/storage - We have to pay for offsite storage and transfer -
it seems just putting an array in offsite facility would eliminate the
need for transportation (in trucks) cost. Of course there would be cost
in the data transfer disk to disk but since everyone seems to have
connectivity over the internet it might be possible to do this using a
B2B link rather than via dedicated circuits.

3) Labor cost in dealing with mechanical failures of robots. This one
is hidden in salary but every time I have to work on a robot it means I
can't be working on something else. While disk drives fail it doesn't
seem to happen nearly as often as having to fish a tape out of a drive
or the tape drive itself having failed.

-----Original Message-----
From: Justin Piszcz [mailto]
Sent: Friday, September 21, 2007 10:08 AM
To: Jeff Lightner
Cc: veritas-bu < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
Subject: Re: [Veritas-bu] Tapeless backup environments?

On Fri, 21 Sep 2007, Jeff Lightner wrote:

[quote]Yesterday our director said that he doesn't intend to ever upgrade
existing STK L700 because eventually we'll go tapeless as that is what
the industry is doing. The idea being we'd have our disk backup
devices here (e.g. Data Domain) and transfer to offsite storage to
another disk device so as to eliminate the need for ever transporting
tapes.

It made me wonder if anyone was actually doing the above already or
[/quote]was
[quote]planning to do so?

[/quote]
That seems to be the way people are 'thinking' but the bottom line is
disk
still is not cheaper than LTO-3 tape and there are a lot of advantages
to
tape; however, convicing management of this is an uphill battle.

Justin.
----------------------------------

CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE: This e-mail may contain privileged or confidential information and is for the sole use of the intended recipient(s). If you are not the intended recipient, any disclosure, copying, distribution, or use of the contents of this information is prohibited and may be unlawful. If you have received this electronic transmission in error, please reply immediately to the sender that you have received the message in error, and delete it. Thank you.

----------------------------------

[/quote]_______________________________________________
Veritas-bu maillist - Veritas-bu < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
http://mailman.eng.auburn.edu/mailman/listinfo/veritas-bu

Cartoon Network.

Did your post have a point? Discovery Channel had a special on this? You&#8217;re annoyed at theoretical questions? wtf?

[b]From:[/b] ckstehman < at > pepco.com [mailto]
[b]Sent:[/b] Friday, September 21, 2007 10:28 AM
[b]To:[/b] Jeff Lightner
[b]Cc:[/b] veritas-bu < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu; veritas-bu-bounces < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
[b]Subject:[/b] Re: [Veritas-bu] Tapeless backup environments?

Discovery Channel

=============================
Carl Stehman
IT Distributed Services Team
Pepco Holdings, Inc.
202-331-6619
Pager 301-765-2703
ckstehman < at > pepco.com

[b]"Jeff Lightner" <jlightner < at > water.com>[/b]
Sent by: veritas-bu-bounces < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
09/21/2007 09:57 AM
To
<veritas-bu < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu>
cc

Subject
[Veritas-bu] Tapeless backup environments?

Yesterday our director said that he doesn&#8217;t intend to ever upgrade existing STK L700 because eventually we&#8217;ll go tapeless as that is what the industry is doing. The idea being we&#8217;d have our disk backup devices here (e.g. Data Domain) and transfer to offsite storage to another disk device so as to eliminate the need for ever transporting tapes.
It made me wonder if anyone was actually doing the above already or was planning to do so?_______________________________________________
Veritas-bu maillist - Veritas-bu < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
http://mailman.eng.auburn.edu/mailman/listinfo/veritas-bu

This Email message and any attachment may contain information that is proprietary, legally privileged, confidential and/or subject to copyright belonging to Pepco Holdings, Inc. or its affiliates ("PHI"). This Email is intended solely for the use of the person(s) to which it is addressed. If you are not an intended recipient, or the employee or agent responsible for delivery of this Email to the intended recipient(s), you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution or copying of this Email is strictly prohibited. If you have received this message in error, please immediately notify the sender and permanently delete this Email and any copies. PHI policies expressly prohibit employees from making defamatory or offensive statements and infringing any copyright or any other legal right by Email communication. PHI will not accept any liability in respect of such communications.

----------------------------------
CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE: This e-mail may contain privileged or confidential information and is for the sole use of the intended recipient(s). If you are not the intended recipient, any disclosure, copying, distribution, or use of the contents of this information is prohibited and may be unlawful. If you have received this electronic transmission in error, please reply immediately to the sender that you have received the message in error, and delete it. Thank you.
----------------------------------

This was in response the the question about eliminating tapes. The IT department of Discovery Channel uses DataDomain and
NetApp for all their backups. They are running Netbackup6.0MP5. We had a tour sponsored by DataDomain. We are considering
going to disk based backups and are looking at VTL's and how all that stuff fits with Netbackup 6.5. We will probably be upgrading
to Netbackup 6.5 next year and adding some sort of disk based backup solution. We are still evaluating vendors, no final decisions
have been made.

Hope this helps

=============================
Carl Stehman
IT Distributed Services Team
Pepco Holdings, Inc.
202-331-6619
Pager 301-765-2703
ckstehman < at > pepco.com

[b]"Jeff Lightner" <jlightner < at > water.com>[/b]
Sent by: veritas-bu-bounces < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
09/21/2007 10:41 AM To
<ckstehman < at > pepco.com> cc
veritas-bu < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu, veritas-bu-bounces < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu Subject
Re: [Veritas-bu] Tapeless backup environments?

Cartoon Network.

Did your post have a point? Discovery Channel had a special on this? You&#8217;re annoyed at theoretical questions? wtf?

[b]From:[/b] ckstehman < at > pepco.com [mailto] [b]
Sent:[/b] Friday, September 21, 2007 10:28 AM[b]
To:[/b] Jeff Lightner[b]
Cc:[/b] veritas-bu < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu; veritas-bu-bounces < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu[b]
Subject:[/b] Re: [Veritas-bu] Tapeless backup environments?

Discovery Channel

=============================
Carl Stehman
IT Distributed Services Team
Pepco Holdings, Inc.
202-331-6619
Pager 301-765-2703
ckstehman < at > pepco.com

[b]"Jeff Lightner" <jlightner < at > water.com>[/b]
Sent by: veritas-bu-bounces < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
09/21/2007 09:57 AM
To
<veritas-bu < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu> cc
Subject
[Veritas-bu] Tapeless backup environments?

Yesterday our director said that he doesn&#8217;t intend to ever upgrade existing STK L700 because eventually we&#8217;ll go tapeless as that is what the industry is doing. The idea being we&#8217;d have our disk backup devices here (e.g. Data Domain) and transfer to offsite storage to another disk device so as to eliminate the need for ever transporting tapes.
It made me wonder if anyone was actually doing the above already or was planning to do so?_______________________________________________
Veritas-bu maillist - Veritas-bu < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
http://mailman.eng.auburn.edu/mailman/listinfo/veritas-bu

This Email message and any attachment may contain information that is proprietary, legally privileged, confidential and/or subject to copyright belonging to Pepco Holdings, Inc. or its affiliates ("PHI"). This Email is intended solely for the use of the person(s) to which it is addressed. If you are not an intended recipient, or the employee or agent responsible for delivery of this Email to the intended recipient(s), you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution or copying of this Email is strictly prohibited. If you have received this message in error, please immediately notify the sender and permanently delete this Email and any copies. PHI policies expressly prohibit employees from making defamatory or offensive statements and infringing any copyright or any other legal right by Email communication. PHI will not accept any liability in respect of such communications.
----------------------------------
CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE: This e-mail may contain privileged or confidential information and is for the sole use of the intended recipient(s). If you are not the intended recipient, any disclosure, copying, distribution, or use of the contents of this information is prohibited and may be unlawful. If you have received this electronic transmission in error, please reply immediately to the sender that you have received the message in error, and delete it. Thank you.
---------------------------------- _______________________________________________
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This Email message and any attachment may contain information that is proprietary, legally privileged, confidential and/or subject to copyright belonging to Pepco Holdings, Inc. or its affiliates ("PHI"). This Email is intended solely for the use of the person(s) to which it is addressed. If you are not an intended recipient, or the employee or agent responsible for delivery of this Email to the intended recipient(s), you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution or copying of this Email is strictly prohibited. If you have received this message in error, please immediately notify the sender and permanently delete this Email and any copies. PHI policies expressly prohibit employees from making defamatory or offensive statements and infringing any copyright or any other legal right by Email communication. PHI will not accept any liability in respect of such communications.

We have it on our plan. We will be using tape for only long term retention of data.

Our plan is to purchase another EMC CDL, and mirror our existing EMC CDL to the EMC CDL at our DR site. Our master server already is duplicated, and this will allow us to start restores of stuff that is not tier 1 applications that already are mirrored to the DR site.

I would prefer not to save the long term on tape, but we don't have a solution for any other way to do it at this time.

Kevin

[b]From:[/b] veritas-bu-bounces < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu [mailto] [b]On Behalf Of [/b]Jeff Lightner
[b]Sent:[/b] Friday, September 21, 2007 9:44 AM
[b]To:[/b] veritas-bu < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
[b]Subject:[/b] [Veritas-bu] Tapeless backup environments?

Yesterday our director said that he doesn&#8217;t intend to ever upgrade existing STK L700 because eventually we&#8217;ll go tapeless as that is what the industry is doing. The idea being we&#8217;d have our disk backup devices here (e.g. Data Domain) and transfer to offsite storage to another disk device so as to eliminate the need for ever transporting tapes.

It made me wonder if anyone was actually doing the above already or was planning to do so?

Thanks.

[b]From:[/b] ckstehman < at > pepco.com [mailto]
[b]Sent:[/b] Friday, September 21, 2007 10:46 AM
[b]To:[/b] Jeff Lightner
[b]Cc:[/b] veritas-bu < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu; veritas-bu-bounces < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
[b]Subject:[/b] Re: [Veritas-bu] Tapeless backup environments?

This was in response the the question about eliminating tapes. The IT department of Discovery Channel uses DataDomain and
NetApp for all their backups. They are running Netbackup6.0MP5. We had a tour sponsored by DataDomain. We are considering
going to disk based backups and are looking at VTL's and how all that stuff fits with Netbackup 6.5. We will probably be upgrading
to Netbackup 6.5 next year and adding some sort of disk based backup solution. We are still evaluating vendors, no final decisions
have been made.

Hope this helps

=============================
Carl Stehman
IT Distributed Services Team
Pepco Holdings, Inc.
202-331-6619
Pager 301-765-2703
ckstehman < at > pepco.com

[b]"Jeff Lightner" <jlightner < at > water.com>[/b]
Sent by: veritas-bu-bounces < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
09/21/2007 10:41 AM
To
<ckstehman < at > pepco.com>
cc
veritas-bu < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu, veritas-bu-bounces < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
Subject
Re: [Veritas-bu] Tapeless backup environments?

Cartoon Network.

Did your post have a point? Discovery Channel had a special on this? You&#8217;re annoyed at theoretical questions? wtf?

[b]From:[/b] ckstehman < at > pepco.com [mailto] [b]
Sent:[/b] Friday, September 21, 2007 10:28 AM[b]
To:[/b] Jeff Lightner[b]
Cc:[/b] veritas-bu < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu; veritas-bu-bounces < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu[b]
Subject:[/b] Re: [Veritas-bu] Tapeless backup environments?

Discovery Channel

=============================
Carl Stehman
IT Distributed Services Team
Pepco Holdings, Inc.
202-331-6619
Pager 301-765-2703
ckstehman < at > pepco.com
[b]"Jeff Lightner" <jlightner < at > water.com>[/b]
Sent by: veritas-bu-bounces < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
09/21/2007 09:57 AM

To
<veritas-bu < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu>
cc

Subject
[Veritas-bu] Tapeless backup environments?

Yesterday our director said that he doesn&#8217;t intend to ever upgrade existing STK L700 because eventually we&#8217;ll go tapeless as that is what the industry is doing. The idea being we&#8217;d have our disk backup devices here (e.g. Data Domain) and transfer to offsite storage to another disk device so as to eliminate the need for ever transporting tapes.
It made me wonder if anyone was actually doing the above already or was planning to do so?_______________________________________________
Veritas-bu maillist - Veritas-bu < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
http://mailman.eng.auburn.edu/mailman/listinfo/veritas-bu

This Email message and any attachment may contain information that is proprietary, legally privileged, confidential and/or subject to copyright belonging to Pepco Holdings, Inc. or its affiliates ("PHI"). This Email is intended solely for the use of the person(s) to which it is addressed. If you are not an intended recipient, or the employee or agent responsible for delivery of this Email to the intended recipient(s), you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution or copying of this Email is strictly prohibited. If you have received this message in error, please immediately notify the sender and permanently delete this Email and any copies. PHI policies expressly prohibit employees from making defamatory or offensive statements and infringing any copyright or any other legal right by Email communication. PHI will not accept any liability in respect of such communications.
----------------------------------
CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE: This e-mail may contain privileged or confidential information and is for the sole use of the intended recipient(s). If you are not the intended recipient, any disclosure, copying, distribution, or use of the contents of this information is prohibited and may be unlawful. If you have received this electronic transmission in error, please reply immediately to the sender that you have received the message in error, and delete it. Thank you.
---------------------------------- _______________________________________________
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This Email message and any attachment may contain information that is proprietary, legally privileged, confidential and/or subject to copyright belonging to Pepco Holdings, Inc. or its affiliates ("PHI"). This Email is intended solely for the use of the person(s) to which it is addressed. If you are not an intended recipient, or the employee or agent responsible for delivery of this Email to the intended recipient(s), you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution or copying of this Email is strictly prohibited. If you have received this message in error, please immediately notify the sender and permanently delete this Email and any copies. PHI policies expressly prohibit employees from making defamatory or offensive statements and infringing any copyright or any other legal right by Email communication. PHI will not accept any liability in respect of such communications.

If you only do filesystem backups and not a lot of on-demand user-database
backups, you can probably get away with disk. If you are doings 1,000s of
user-initiated database backups though, disk will not cut it unless you
had a massive infrastructure. Using LTO-3 or LTO-4 drives with 10GBps
for example is much cheaper.

Justin.

On Fri, 21 Sep 2007, ckstehman < at > pepco.com wrote:

[quote]This was in response the the question about eliminating tapes. The IT
department of Discovery Channel uses DataDomain and
NetApp for all their backups. They are running Netbackup6.0MP5. We had a
tour sponsored by DataDomain. We are considering
going to disk based backups and are looking at VTL's and how all that
stuff fits with Netbackup 6.5. We will probably be upgrading
to Netbackup 6.5 next year and adding some sort of disk based backup
solution. We are still evaluating vendors, no final decisions
have been made.

Hope this helps

=============================
Carl Stehman
IT Distributed Services Team
Pepco Holdings, Inc.
202-331-6619
Pager 301-765-2703
ckstehman < at > pepco.com

"Jeff Lightner" <jlightner < at > water.com>
Sent by: veritas-bu-bounces < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
09/21/2007 10:41 AM

To
<ckstehman < at > pepco.com>
cc
veritas-bu < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu,
veritas-bu-bounces < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
Subject
Re: [Veritas-bu] Tapeless backup environments?

Cartoon Network.

Did your post have a point? Discovery Channel had a special on this?
You?re annoyed at theoretical questions? wtf?

From: ckstehman < at > pepco.com [mailto]
Sent: Friday, September 21, 2007 10:28 AM
To: Jeff Lightner
Cc: veritas-bu < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu;
veritas-bu-bounces < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
Subject: Re: [Veritas-bu] Tapeless backup environments?

Discovery Channel

=============================
Carl Stehman
IT Distributed Services Team
Pepco Holdings, Inc.
202-331-6619
Pager 301-765-2703
ckstehman < at > pepco.com

"Jeff Lightner" <jlightner < at > water.com>
Sent by: veritas-bu-bounces < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
09/21/2007 09:57 AM

To
<veritas-bu < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu>
cc

Subject
[Veritas-bu] Tapeless backup environments?

Yesterday our director said that he doesn?t intend to ever upgrade
existing STK L700 because eventually we?ll go tapeless as that is what the
industry is doing. The idea being we?d have our disk backup devices here
(e.g. Data Domain) and transfer to offsite storage to another disk device
so as to eliminate the need for ever transporting tapes.
It made me wonder if anyone was actually doing the above already or was
planning to do so?_______________________________________________
Veritas-bu maillist - Veritas-bu < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
http://mailman.eng.auburn.edu/mailman/listinfo/veritas-bu

This Email message and any attachment may contain information that is
proprietary, legally privileged, confidential and/or subject to copyright
belonging to Pepco Holdings, Inc. or its affiliates ("PHI"). This Email is
intended solely for the use of the person(s) to which it is addressed. If
you are not an intended recipient, or the employee or agent responsible
for delivery of this Email to the intended recipient(s), you are hereby
notified that any dissemination, distribution or copying of this Email is
strictly prohibited. If you have received this message in error, please
immediately notify the sender and permanently delete this Email and any
copies. PHI policies expressly prohibit employees from making defamatory
or offensive statements and infringing any copyright or any other legal
right by Email communication. PHI will not accept any liability in respect
of such communications.
----------------------------------
CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE: This e-mail may contain privileged or confidential
information and is for the sole use of the intended recipient(s). If you
are not the intended recipient, any disclosure, copying, distribution, or
use of the contents of this information is prohibited and may be unlawful.
If you have received this electronic transmission in error, please reply
immediately to the sender that you have received the message in error, and
delete it. Thank you.
----------------------------------
_______________________________________________
Veritas-bu maillist - Veritas-bu < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
http://mailman.eng.auburn.edu/mailman/listinfo/veritas-bu

This Email message and any attachment may contain information that is
proprietary, legally privileged, confidential and/or subject to copyright
belonging to Pepco Holdings, Inc. or its affiliates ("PHI"). This Email is
intended solely for the use of the person(s) to which it is addressed. If
you are not an intended recipient, or the employee or agent responsible for
delivery of this Email to the intended recipient(s), you are hereby notified
that any dissemination, distribution or copying of this Email is strictly
prohibited. If you have received this message in error, please immediately
notify the sender and permanently delete this Email and any copies. PHI
policies expressly prohibit employees from making defamatory or offensive
statements and infringing any copyright or any other legal right by Email
communication. PHI will not accept any liability in respect of such
communications.

[/quote]_______________________________________________
Veritas-bu maillist - Veritas-bu < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
http://mailman.eng.auburn.edu/mailman/listinfo/veritas-bu

Huh? I've got to say I think completely the opposite of you on this
one. User directed backups are really hard to direct at a resource that
is limited by the number of drives. I suppose you could multiplex, but
yuck.

Why wouldn't you point all user backups to disk? It's very similar to
what I like to do with Redologs/logical logs/transaction logs. When
it's time to back them up, it's time to back them up. They don't want to
wait for a tape drive. So send them to disk.

Why wouldn't you want to send them to disk?

---
W. Curtis Preston
Backup Blog < at > www.backupcentral.com
VP Data Protection, GlassHouse Technologies

-----Original Message-----
From: veritas-bu-bounces < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
[mailto] On Behalf Of Justin
Piszcz
Sent: Friday, September 21, 2007 8:01 AM
To: ckstehman < at > pepco.com
Cc: veritas-bu < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu; Jeff Lightner;
veritas-bu-bounces < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
Subject: Re: [Veritas-bu] Tapeless backup environments?

If you only do filesystem backups and not a lot of on-demand
user-database
backups, you can probably get away with disk. If you are doings 1,000s
of
user-initiated database backups though, disk will not cut it unless you
had a massive infrastructure. Using LTO-3 or LTO-4 drives with 10GBps
for example is much cheaper.

Justin.

On Fri, 21 Sep 2007, ckstehman < at > pepco.com wrote:

[quote]This was in response the the question about eliminating tapes. The IT
department of Discovery Channel uses DataDomain and
NetApp for all their backups. They are running Netbackup6.0MP5. We
[/quote]had a
[quote]tour sponsored by DataDomain. We are considering
going to disk based backups and are looking at VTL's and how all that
stuff fits with Netbackup 6.5. We will probably be upgrading
to Netbackup 6.5 next year and adding some sort of disk based backup
solution. We are still evaluating vendors, no final decisions
have been made.

Hope this helps

=============================
Carl Stehman
IT Distributed Services Team
Pepco Holdings, Inc.
202-331-6619
Pager 301-765-2703
ckstehman < at > pepco.com

"Jeff Lightner" <jlightner < at > water.com>
Sent by: veritas-bu-bounces < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
09/21/2007 10:41 AM

To
<ckstehman < at > pepco.com>
cc
veritas-bu < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu,
veritas-bu-bounces < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
Subject
Re: [Veritas-bu] Tapeless backup environments?

Cartoon Network.

Did your post have a point? Discovery Channel had a special on this?
You?re annoyed at theoretical questions? wtf?

From: ckstehman < at > pepco.com [mailto]
Sent: Friday, September 21, 2007 10:28 AM
To: Jeff Lightner
Cc: veritas-bu < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu;
veritas-bu-bounces < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
Subject: Re: [Veritas-bu] Tapeless backup environments?

Discovery Channel

=============================
Carl Stehman
IT Distributed Services Team
Pepco Holdings, Inc.
202-331-6619
Pager 301-765-2703
ckstehman < at > pepco.com

"Jeff Lightner" <jlightner < at > water.com>
Sent by: veritas-bu-bounces < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
09/21/2007 09:57 AM

To
<veritas-bu < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu>
cc

Subject
[Veritas-bu] Tapeless backup environments?

Yesterday our director said that he doesn?t intend to ever upgrade
existing STK L700 because eventually we?ll go tapeless as that is what
[/quote]the
[quote]industry is doing. The idea being we?d have our disk backup devices
[/quote]here
[quote](e.g. Data Domain) and transfer to offsite storage to another disk
[/quote]device
[quote]so as to eliminate the need for ever transporting tapes.
It made me wonder if anyone was actually doing the above already or
[/quote]was
[quote]planning to do so?_______________________________________________
Veritas-bu maillist - Veritas-bu < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
http://mailman.eng.auburn.edu/mailman/listinfo/veritas-bu

This Email message and any attachment may contain information that is
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This Email message and any attachment may contain information that is
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First, you can't compare the cost of disk and tape directly like that.
You have to include the drives and robots. A drive by itself is useful;
a tape by itself is not.

Setting that aside, if I put that disk in a system that's doing 20:1
de-duplication, my cost is now 1.65c/GB vs your 3-9c/GB.

---
W. Curtis Preston
Backup Blog < at > www.backupcentral.com
VP Data Protection, GlassHouse Technologies

-----Original Message-----
From: veritas-bu-bounces < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
[mailto] On Behalf Of Justin
Piszcz
Sent: Friday, September 21, 2007 7:36 AM
To: Jeff Lightner
Cc: veritas-bu < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
Subject: Re: [Veritas-bu] Tapeless backup environments?

I believe disks are 33c/gigabyte and tapes are 3-9cents/gigabyte or even

cheaper, I do not remember the exact figures, but someone I know has
done
a cost analysis and tapes were by far cheaper. Also something that
nobody
calculates is the cost of power to keep disks spinning.

Justin.

On Fri, 21 Sep 2007, Jeff Lightner wrote:

[quote]Disk is not cheaper? You've done a cost analysis?

Not saying you're wrong and I haven't done an analysis but I'd be
surprised if disks didn't actually work out to be cheaper over time:

1) Tapes age/break - We buy on average several hundred tapes a year -
support on a disk array for failing disks may or may not be more
expensive.

2) Transport/storage - We have to pay for offsite storage and transfer
[/quote]-
[quote]it seems just putting an array in offsite facility would eliminate the
need for transportation (in trucks) cost. Of course there would be
[/quote]cost
[quote]in the data transfer disk to disk but since everyone seems to have
connectivity over the internet it might be possible to do this using a
B2B link rather than via dedicated circuits.

3) Labor cost in dealing with mechanical failures of robots. This
[/quote]one
[quote]is hidden in salary but every time I have to work on a robot it means
[/quote]I
[quote]can't be working on something else. While disk drives fail it
[/quote]doesn't
[quote]seem to happen nearly as often as having to fish a tape out of a drive
or the tape drive itself having failed.

-----Original Message-----
From: Justin Piszcz [mailto]
Sent: Friday, September 21, 2007 10:08 AM
To: Jeff Lightner
Cc: veritas-bu < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
Subject: Re: [Veritas-bu] Tapeless backup environments?

On Fri, 21 Sep 2007, Jeff Lightner wrote:

[quote]Yesterday our director said that he doesn't intend to ever upgrade
existing STK L700 because eventually we'll go tapeless as that is
[/quote][/quote]what
[quote][quote]the industry is doing. The idea being we'd have our disk backup
devices here (e.g. Data Domain) and transfer to offsite storage to
another disk device so as to eliminate the need for ever transporting
tapes.

It made me wonder if anyone was actually doing the above already or
[/quote]was
[quote]planning to do so?

[/quote]
That seems to be the way people are 'thinking' but the bottom line is
disk
still is not cheaper than LTO-3 tape and there are a lot of advantages
to
tape; however, convicing management of this is an uphill battle.

Justin.
----------------------------------

CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE: This e-mail may contain privileged or
[/quote]confidential information and is for the sole use of the intended
recipient(s). If you are not the intended recipient, any disclosure,
copying, distribution, or use of the contents of this information is
prohibited and may be unlawful. If you have received this electronic
transmission in error, please reply immediately to the sender that you
have received the message in error, and delete it. Thank you.
[quote]
----------------------------------

[/quote]_______________________________________________
Veritas-bu maillist - Veritas-bu < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
http://mailman.eng.auburn.edu/mailman/listinfo/veritas-bu

_______________________________________________
Veritas-bu maillist - Veritas-bu < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
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The only issue there is that the EMC CDL does not support de-duplication, and it doesn&#8217;t look like they&#8217;ll be doing it any time soon. I know they&#8217;re working on it, but they haven&#8217;t announced anything public, so who knows. Compare that to the other de-dupe vendors that announced probably a year before they were ready, and you&#8217;ve got some sense of my opinion of when EMC de-dupe will actually be GA if not later.

Your design would work great if you had de-dupe. Without de-dupe, you are going to be replicated 20 times more data (or more), requiring a significantly larger pipe.

---
W. Curtis Preston
Backup Blog < at > [url=http://www.backupcentral.com]www.backupcentral.com[/url]
VP Data Protection, GlassHouse Technologies

[b]From:[/b] veritas-bu-bounces < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu [mailto] [b]On Behalf Of [/b]Kevin Whittaker
[b]Sent:[/b] Friday, September 21, 2007 7:48 AM
[b]To:[/b] Jeff Lightner; veritas-bu < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
[b]Subject:[/b] Re: [Veritas-bu] Tapeless backup environments?

We have it on our plan. We will be using tape for only long term retention of data.

Our plan is to purchase another EMC CDL, and mirror our existing EMC CDL to the EMC CDL at our DR site. Our master server already is duplicated, and this will allow us to start restores of stuff that is not tier 1 applications that already are mirrored to the DR site.

I would prefer not to save the long term on tape, but we don't have a solution for any other way to do it at this time.

Kevin

[b]From:[/b] veritas-bu-bounces < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu [mailto] [b]On Behalf Of [/b]Jeff Lightner
[b]Sent:[/b] Friday, September 21, 2007 9:44 AM
[b]To:[/b] veritas-bu < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
[b]Subject:[/b] [Veritas-bu] Tapeless backup environments?
Yesterday our director said that he doesn&#8217;t intend to ever upgrade existing STK L700 because eventually we&#8217;ll go tapeless as that is what the industry is doing. The idea being we&#8217;d have our disk backup devices here (e.g. Data Domain) and transfer to offsite storage to another disk device so as to eliminate the need for ever transporting tapes.
It made me wonder if anyone was actually doing the above already or was planning to do so?

I think what I'm reading here is that no one has done a true 1-to-1
comparison on Tape versus Deduplication / disk. I guess the next
question is, what would go into such a comparison?

1) Recovery Point Objective
2) Amount of Data To Be Backed Up
3) Retention
4) Cost of Hardware (Deduplication Appliance w/ Disk)
5) Cost of Hardware (Tape Library)
6) Annual Maintenance on Hardware Above
7) Cost of Media w/ Replacement Figures
8) Cost to power / cool disks (infrastructure)
9) Cost of Network link to remote site for de-dupe
10) Cost of Media Transportation and Storage

Price per GB unless factoring in at least all of the above is useless
and much of that information depends on configuration. I did such an
analysis when we upgraded to NBU6 and considered deduplication this time
last year. In my case, many of the features of disk based deduplication
weren't applicable to my situation (especially RPO) so tape was easily
cheaper. If you are shipping media offsite daily though for a >=1 day
RPO then deduplication definitely makes a play. Further price per gig
on the disk side has been heavily influenced by "consumer grade" SATA
drives at 750gb and 1TB bringing costs way down in comparison to only 1
or 2 years ago.

There's certainly a lot of data to injest before making claims of either
technology's superiority in a particular environment.

-Jonathan

-----Original Message-----
From: veritas-bu-bounces < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
[mailto] On Behalf Of Curtis
Preston
Sent: Friday, September 21, 2007 1:10 PM
To: Justin Piszcz; Jeff Lightner
Cc: veritas-bu < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
Subject: Re: [Veritas-bu] Tapeless backup environments?

First, you can't compare the cost of disk and tape directly like that.
You have to include the drives and robots. A drive by itself is useful;
a tape by itself is not.

Setting that aside, if I put that disk in a system that's doing 20:1
de-duplication, my cost is now 1.65c/GB vs your 3-9c/GB.

---
W. Curtis Preston
Backup Blog < at > www.backupcentral.com
VP Data Protection, GlassHouse Technologies

-----Original Message-----
From: veritas-bu-bounces < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
[mailto] On Behalf Of Justin
Piszcz
Sent: Friday, September 21, 2007 7:36 AM
To: Jeff Lightner
Cc: veritas-bu < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
Subject: Re: [Veritas-bu] Tapeless backup environments?

I believe disks are 33c/gigabyte and tapes are 3-9cents/gigabyte or even

cheaper, I do not remember the exact figures, but someone I know has
done a cost analysis and tapes were by far cheaper. Also something that
nobody calculates is the cost of power to keep disks spinning.

Justin.

On Fri, 21 Sep 2007, Jeff Lightner wrote:

[quote]Disk is not cheaper? You've done a cost analysis?

Not saying you're wrong and I haven't done an analysis but I'd be
surprised if disks didn't actually work out to be cheaper over time:

1) Tapes age/break - We buy on average several hundred tapes a year -
support on a disk array for failing disks may or may not be more
expensive.

2) Transport/storage - We have to pay for offsite storage and transfer
[/quote]-
[quote]it seems just putting an array in offsite facility would eliminate the
[/quote]
[quote]need for transportation (in trucks) cost. Of course there would be
[/quote]cost
[quote]in the data transfer disk to disk but since everyone seems to have
connectivity over the internet it might be possible to do this using a
[/quote]
[quote]B2B link rather than via dedicated circuits.

3) Labor cost in dealing with mechanical failures of robots. This
[/quote]one
[quote]is hidden in salary but every time I have to work on a robot it means
[/quote]I
[quote]can't be working on something else. While disk drives fail it
[/quote]doesn't
[quote]seem to happen nearly as often as having to fish a tape out of a drive
[/quote]
[quote]or the tape drive itself having failed.

-----Original Message-----
From: Justin Piszcz [mailto]
Sent: Friday, September 21, 2007 10:08 AM
To: Jeff Lightner
Cc: veritas-bu < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
Subject: Re: [Veritas-bu] Tapeless backup environments?

On Fri, 21 Sep 2007, Jeff Lightner wrote:

[quote]Yesterday our director said that he doesn't intend to ever upgrade
existing STK L700 because eventually we'll go tapeless as that is
[/quote][/quote]what
[quote][quote]the industry is doing. The idea being we'd have our disk backup
devices here (e.g. Data Domain) and transfer to offsite storage to
another disk device so as to eliminate the need for ever transporting
[/quote][/quote]
[quote][quote]tapes.

It made me wonder if anyone was actually doing the above already or
[/quote]was
[quote]planning to do so?

[/quote]
That seems to be the way people are 'thinking' but the bottom line is
disk still is not cheaper than LTO-3 tape and there are a lot of
advantages to tape; however, convicing management of this is an uphill
[/quote]
[quote]battle.

Justin.
----------------------------------

CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE: This e-mail may contain privileged or
[/quote]confidential information and is for the sole use of the intended
recipient(s). If you are not the intended recipient, any disclosure,
copying, distribution, or use of the contents of this information is
prohibited and may be unlawful. If you have received this electronic
transmission in error, please reply immediately to the sender that you
have received the message in error, and delete it. Thank you.
[quote]
----------------------------------

[/quote]_______________________________________________
Veritas-bu maillist - Veritas-bu < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
http://mailman.eng.auburn.edu/mailman/listinfo/veritas-bu

_______________________________________________
Veritas-bu maillist - Veritas-bu < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
http://mailman.eng.auburn.edu/mailman/listinfo/veritas-bu

_______________________________________________
Veritas-bu maillist - Veritas-bu < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
http://mailman.eng.auburn.edu/mailman/listinfo/veritas-bu

Yes, we are in the middle of this (trying to replace D2T2T with D2D2D)
process now.

What I am seeing is that while disk media costs more than tape per TB,
de-duplication is the difference-maker, the enabler, making extra weeks
or months retention of D2D data inexpensive. Buy another appliance for
off-site replication, and only changes, not full backups, are
essentially moved between sites, causing much lower volume of
transmission. Kind of like running an "rsync" after previously
"rsync"ing. Good news that all vendors I've seriously looked at make
this automatic and great news is that one might expect NetBackup will be
able to see and use the replicated site directly (soon).

I'm not a fan of VTL, so we are not looking at VTL. Your situation may vary.

Disk-to-disk backup planning is not a simple exercise, however, as
features, operations and even terminology varies substantially from
vendor to vendor.

The state of the art does seem much more mature than even a couple of
years ago. All vendors we're seriously looking at know their competition
and will make very substantial discounting from "list" prices. Proper
sizing has been a chore, as each vendor tries to minimize the cost of
their proposal.

Although we have not made final decisions, I find the "Data Domain"
backup appliance offerings superb (though we have not yet had an on-site
trial).

On the other hand, we have a lot of NetApp primary disk, and so the
NetApp backup offerings are interesting for their support/use of
snapshots and integration with NetBackup ($$$ features on both NetApp
and Symantec sides). Technically speaking, though, NetApp NearStore used
as a simple disk backup appliance does not appear to stack up to the
Data Domain offerings.

Which solution is best for us has yet to be determined for my
approximately 10TB site.

All of the D2D2D solutions we've studied and have been proposed to us
would entail significantly more capital outlay than simply adding some
staging disk and getting more modern tape drives for our L700, but the
performance, scalability and automation levels of D2D2D are very exciting.

Hope this helps! (please do post your experiences)

cheers, wayne

Jeff Lightner wrote, in part, on 2007-09-21 9:43 AM:
[quote]
Yesterday our director said that he doesn’t intend to ever upgrade
existing STK L700 because eventually we’ll go tapeless as that is what
the industry is doing. The idea being we’d have our disk backup
devices here (e.g. Data Domain) and transfer to offsite storage to
another disk device so as to eliminate the need for ever transporting
tapes.

It made me wonder if anyone was actually doing the above already or
was planning to do so?

[/quote]

_______________________________________________
Veritas-bu maillist - Veritas-bu < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
http://mailman.eng.auburn.edu/mailman/listinfo/veritas-bu

Oh, I wouldn't say that. ;) We've been doing a lot of comparisons
lately, and the comparisons include all of what you listed plus the cost
differential in cost of operation. For example, opex savings from not
having to worry about multiplexing settings, tape failures, etc.

---
W. Curtis Preston
Backup Blog < at > www.backupcentral.com
VP Data Protection, GlassHouse Technologies

-----Original Message-----
From: veritas-bu-bounces < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
[mailto] On Behalf Of Martin,
Jonathan
Sent: Friday, September 21, 2007 10:37 AM
To: veritas-bu < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
Subject: Re: [Veritas-bu] Tapeless backup environments?

I think what I'm reading here is that no one has done a true 1-to-1
comparison on Tape versus Deduplication / disk. I guess the next
question is, what would go into such a comparison?

1) Recovery Point Objective
2) Amount of Data To Be Backed Up
3) Retention
4) Cost of Hardware (Deduplication Appliance w/ Disk)
5) Cost of Hardware (Tape Library)
6) Annual Maintenance on Hardware Above
7) Cost of Media w/ Replacement Figures
8) Cost to power / cool disks (infrastructure)
9) Cost of Network link to remote site for de-dupe
10) Cost of Media Transportation and Storage

Price per GB unless factoring in at least all of the above is useless
and much of that information depends on configuration. I did such an
analysis when we upgraded to NBU6 and considered deduplication this time
last year. In my case, many of the features of disk based deduplication
weren't applicable to my situation (especially RPO) so tape was easily
cheaper. If you are shipping media offsite daily though for a >=1 day
RPO then deduplication definitely makes a play. Further price per gig
on the disk side has been heavily influenced by "consumer grade" SATA
drives at 750gb and 1TB bringing costs way down in comparison to only 1
or 2 years ago.

There's certainly a lot of data to injest before making claims of either
technology's superiority in a particular environment.

-Jonathan

-----Original Message-----
From: veritas-bu-bounces < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
[mailto] On Behalf Of Curtis
Preston
Sent: Friday, September 21, 2007 1:10 PM
To: Justin Piszcz; Jeff Lightner
Cc: veritas-bu < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
Subject: Re: [Veritas-bu] Tapeless backup environments?

First, you can't compare the cost of disk and tape directly like that.
You have to include the drives and robots. A drive by itself is useful;
a tape by itself is not.

Setting that aside, if I put that disk in a system that's doing 20:1
de-duplication, my cost is now 1.65c/GB vs your 3-9c/GB.

---
W. Curtis Preston
Backup Blog < at > www.backupcentral.com
VP Data Protection, GlassHouse Technologies

-----Original Message-----
From: veritas-bu-bounces < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
[mailto] On Behalf Of Justin
Piszcz
Sent: Friday, September 21, 2007 7:36 AM
To: Jeff Lightner
Cc: veritas-bu < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
Subject: Re: [Veritas-bu] Tapeless backup environments?

I believe disks are 33c/gigabyte and tapes are 3-9cents/gigabyte or even

cheaper, I do not remember the exact figures, but someone I know has
done a cost analysis and tapes were by far cheaper. Also something that
nobody calculates is the cost of power to keep disks spinning.

Justin.

On Fri, 21 Sep 2007, Jeff Lightner wrote:

[quote]Disk is not cheaper? You've done a cost analysis?

Not saying you're wrong and I haven't done an analysis but I'd be
surprised if disks didn't actually work out to be cheaper over time:

1) Tapes age/break - We buy on average several hundred tapes a year -
support on a disk array for failing disks may or may not be more
expensive.

2) Transport/storage - We have to pay for offsite storage and transfer
[/quote]-
[quote]it seems just putting an array in offsite facility would eliminate the
[/quote]
[quote]need for transportation (in trucks) cost. Of course there would be
[/quote]cost
[quote]in the data transfer disk to disk but since everyone seems to have
connectivity over the internet it might be possible to do this using a
[/quote]
[quote]B2B link rather than via dedicated circuits.

3) Labor cost in dealing with mechanical failures of robots. This
[/quote]one
[quote]is hidden in salary but every time I have to work on a robot it means
[/quote]I
[quote]can't be working on something else. While disk drives fail it
[/quote]doesn't
[quote]seem to happen nearly as often as having to fish a tape out of a drive
[/quote]
[quote]or the tape drive itself having failed.

-----Original Message-----
From: Justin Piszcz [mailto]
Sent: Friday, September 21, 2007 10:08 AM
To: Jeff Lightner
Cc: veritas-bu < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
Subject: Re: [Veritas-bu] Tapeless backup environments?

On Fri, 21 Sep 2007, Jeff Lightner wrote:

[quote]Yesterday our director said that he doesn't intend to ever upgrade
existing STK L700 because eventually we'll go tapeless as that is
[/quote][/quote]what
[quote][quote]the industry is doing. The idea being we'd have our disk backup
devices here (e.g. Data Domain) and transfer to offsite storage to
another disk device so as to eliminate the need for ever transporting
[/quote][/quote]
[quote][quote]tapes.

It made me wonder if anyone was actually doing the above already or
[/quote]was
[quote]planning to do so?

[/quote]
That seems to be the way people are 'thinking' but the bottom line is
disk still is not cheaper than LTO-3 tape and there are a lot of
advantages to tape; however, convicing management of this is an uphill
[/quote]
[quote]battle.

Justin.
----------------------------------

CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE: This e-mail may contain privileged or
[/quote]confidential information and is for the sole use of the intended
recipient(s). If you are not the intended recipient, any disclosure,
copying, distribution, or use of the contents of this information is
prohibited and may be unlawful. If you have received this electronic
transmission in error, please reply immediately to the sender that you
have received the message in error, and delete it. Thank you.
[quote]
----------------------------------

[/quote]_______________________________________________
Veritas-bu maillist - Veritas-bu < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
http://mailman.eng.auburn.edu/mailman/listinfo/veritas-bu

_______________________________________________
Veritas-bu maillist - Veritas-bu < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
http://mailman.eng.auburn.edu/mailman/listinfo/veritas-bu

_______________________________________________
Veritas-bu maillist - Veritas-bu < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
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_______________________________________________
Veritas-bu maillist - Veritas-bu < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
http://mailman.eng.auburn.edu/mailman/listinfo/veritas-bu

I stand corrected. Curtis has all the answers and he's sitting on them.
=P

Worrying about multiplexing settings and tape failures? Come on, that's
about as soft a cost as you can dream up.

-Jonathan

-----Original Message-----
From: Curtis Preston [mailto]
Sent: Friday, September 21, 2007 2:06 PM
To: Martin, Jonathan; veritas-bu < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
Subject: RE: [Veritas-bu] Tapeless backup environments?

Oh, I wouldn't say that. ;) We've been doing a lot of comparisons
lately, and the comparisons include all of what you listed plus the cost
differential in cost of operation. For example, opex savings from not
having to worry about multiplexing settings, tape failures, etc.

---
W. Curtis Preston
Backup Blog < at > www.backupcentral.com
VP Data Protection, GlassHouse Technologies

-----Original Message-----
From: veritas-bu-bounces < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
[mailto] On Behalf Of Martin,
Jonathan
Sent: Friday, September 21, 2007 10:37 AM
To: veritas-bu < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
Subject: Re: [Veritas-bu] Tapeless backup environments?

I think what I'm reading here is that no one has done a true 1-to-1
comparison on Tape versus Deduplication / disk. I guess the next
question is, what would go into such a comparison?

1) Recovery Point Objective
2) Amount of Data To Be Backed Up
3) Retention
4) Cost of Hardware (Deduplication Appliance w/ Disk)
5) Cost of Hardware (Tape Library)
6) Annual Maintenance on Hardware Above
7) Cost of Media w/ Replacement Figures
8) Cost to power / cool disks (infrastructure)
9) Cost of Network link to remote site for de-dupe
10) Cost of Media Transportation and Storage

Price per GB unless factoring in at least all of the above is useless
and much of that information depends on configuration. I did such an
analysis when we upgraded to NBU6 and considered deduplication this time
last year. In my case, many of the features of disk based deduplication
weren't applicable to my situation (especially RPO) so tape was easily
cheaper. If you are shipping media offsite daily though for a >=1 day
RPO then deduplication definitely makes a play. Further price per gig
on the disk side has been heavily influenced by "consumer grade" SATA
drives at 750gb and 1TB bringing costs way down in comparison to only 1
or 2 years ago.

There's certainly a lot of data to injest before making claims of either
technology's superiority in a particular environment.

-Jonathan

-----Original Message-----
From: veritas-bu-bounces < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
[mailto] On Behalf Of Curtis
Preston
Sent: Friday, September 21, 2007 1:10 PM
To: Justin Piszcz; Jeff Lightner
Cc: veritas-bu < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
Subject: Re: [Veritas-bu] Tapeless backup environments?

First, you can't compare the cost of disk and tape directly like that.
You have to include the drives and robots. A drive by itself is useful;
a tape by itself is not.

Setting that aside, if I put that disk in a system that's doing 20:1
de-duplication, my cost is now 1.65c/GB vs your 3-9c/GB.

---
W. Curtis Preston
Backup Blog < at > www.backupcentral.com
VP Data Protection, GlassHouse Technologies

-----Original Message-----
From: veritas-bu-bounces < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
[mailto] On Behalf Of Justin
Piszcz
Sent: Friday, September 21, 2007 7:36 AM
To: Jeff Lightner
Cc: veritas-bu < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
Subject: Re: [Veritas-bu] Tapeless backup environments?

I believe disks are 33c/gigabyte and tapes are 3-9cents/gigabyte or even

cheaper, I do not remember the exact figures, but someone I know has
done a cost analysis and tapes were by far cheaper. Also something that
nobody calculates is the cost of power to keep disks spinning.

Justin.

On Fri, 21 Sep 2007, Jeff Lightner wrote:

[quote]Disk is not cheaper? You've done a cost analysis?

Not saying you're wrong and I haven't done an analysis but I'd be
surprised if disks didn't actually work out to be cheaper over time:

1) Tapes age/break - We buy on average several hundred tapes a year -
support on a disk array for failing disks may or may not be more
expensive.

2) Transport/storage - We have to pay for offsite storage and transfer
[/quote]-
[quote]it seems just putting an array in offsite facility would eliminate the
[/quote]
[quote]need for transportation (in trucks) cost. Of course there would be
[/quote]cost
[quote]in the data transfer disk to disk but since everyone seems to have
connectivity over the internet it might be possible to do this using a
[/quote]
[quote]B2B link rather than via dedicated circuits.

3) Labor cost in dealing with mechanical failures of robots. This
[/quote]one
[quote]is hidden in salary but every time I have to work on a robot it means
[/quote]I
[quote]can't be working on something else. While disk drives fail it
[/quote]doesn't
[quote]seem to happen nearly as often as having to fish a tape out of a drive
[/quote]
[quote]or the tape drive itself having failed.

-----Original Message-----
From: Justin Piszcz [mailto]
Sent: Friday, September 21, 2007 10:08 AM
To: Jeff Lightner
Cc: veritas-bu < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
Subject: Re: [Veritas-bu] Tapeless backup environments?

On Fri, 21 Sep 2007, Jeff Lightner wrote:

[quote]Yesterday our director said that he doesn't intend to ever upgrade
existing STK L700 because eventually we'll go tapeless as that is
[/quote][/quote]what
[quote][quote]the industry is doing. The idea being we'd have our disk backup
devices here (e.g. Data Domain) and transfer to offsite storage to
another disk device so as to eliminate the need for ever transporting
[/quote][/quote]
[quote][quote]tapes.

It made me wonder if anyone was actually doing the above already or
[/quote]was
[quote]planning to do so?

[/quote]
That seems to be the way people are 'thinking' but the bottom line is
disk still is not cheaper than LTO-3 tape and there are a lot of
advantages to tape; however, convicing management of this is an uphill
[/quote]
[quote]battle.

Justin.
----------------------------------

CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE: This e-mail may contain privileged or
[/quote]confidential information and is for the sole use of the intended
recipient(s). If you are not the intended recipient, any disclosure,
copying, distribution, or use of the contents of this information is
prohibited and may be unlawful. If you have received this electronic
transmission in error, please reply immediately to the sender that you
have received the message in error, and delete it. Thank you.
[quote]
----------------------------------

[/quote]_______________________________________________
Veritas-bu maillist - Veritas-bu < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
http://mailman.eng.auburn.edu/mailman/listinfo/veritas-bu

_______________________________________________
Veritas-bu maillist - Veritas-bu < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
http://mailman.eng.auburn.edu/mailman/listinfo/veritas-bu

_______________________________________________
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http://mailman.eng.auburn.edu/mailman/listinfo/veritas-bu

_______________________________________________
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Just curious. You said "I'm not a fan of VTL," and so therefore aren't
looking at the VTL vendors at all. That kind of leaves out a whole
segment of the market, doesn't it? I'm aware of Data Domain, Exagrid,
NEC & NetApp NAS-based de-dupe products, but I can't imagine not also
bringing Diligent, Falconstor, Quantum & SEPATON to the table just
because their interface is (currently) virtual tape. I would bring them
all to the table and make them tell me why I should go their direction,
be it virtual tape or NAS.

In addition, depending on how things are configured and what
software/version we're talking about, I'd much rather back up to a VTL
than a NAS head.

---
W. Curtis Preston
Backup Blog < at > www.backupcentral.com
VP Data Protection, GlassHouse Technologies

-----Original Message-----
From: veritas-bu-bounces < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
[mailto] On Behalf Of Wayne T
Smith
Sent: Friday, September 21, 2007 10:38 AM
To: veritas-bu < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
Subject: Re: [Veritas-bu] Tapeless backup environments?

Yes, we are in the middle of this (trying to replace D2T2T with D2D2D)
process now.

What I am seeing is that while disk media costs more than tape per TB,
de-duplication is the difference-maker, the enabler, making extra weeks
or months retention of D2D data inexpensive. Buy another appliance for
off-site replication, and only changes, not full backups, are
essentially moved between sites, causing much lower volume of
transmission. Kind of like running an "rsync" after previously
"rsync"ing. Good news that all vendors I've seriously looked at make
this automatic and great news is that one might expect NetBackup will be

able to see and use the replicated site directly (soon).

I'm not a fan of VTL, so we are not looking at VTL. Your situation may
vary.

Disk-to-disk backup planning is not a simple exercise, however, as
features, operations and even terminology varies substantially from
vendor to vendor.

The state of the art does seem much more mature than even a couple of
years ago. All vendors we're seriously looking at know their competition

and will make very substantial discounting from "list" prices. Proper
sizing has been a chore, as each vendor tries to minimize the cost of
their proposal.

Although we have not made final decisions, I find the "Data Domain"
backup appliance offerings superb (though we have not yet had an on-site

trial).

On the other hand, we have a lot of NetApp primary disk, and so the
NetApp backup offerings are interesting for their support/use of
snapshots and integration with NetBackup ($$$ features on both NetApp
and Symantec sides). Technically speaking, though, NetApp NearStore used

as a simple disk backup appliance does not appear to stack up to the
Data Domain offerings.

Which solution is best for us has yet to be determined for my
approximately 10TB site.

All of the D2D2D solutions we've studied and have been proposed to us
would entail significantly more capital outlay than simply adding some
staging disk and getting more modern tape drives for our L700, but the
performance, scalability and automation levels of D2D2D are very
exciting.

Hope this helps! (please do post your experiences)

cheers, wayne

Jeff Lightner wrote, in part, on 2007-09-21 9:43 AM:
[quote]
Yesterday our director said that he doesn't intend to ever upgrade
existing STK L700 because eventually we'll go tapeless as that is what
[/quote]
[quote]the industry is doing. The idea being we'd have our disk backup
devices here (e.g. Data Domain) and transfer to offsite storage to
another disk device so as to eliminate the need for ever transporting
tapes.

It made me wonder if anyone was actually doing the above already or
was planning to do so?

[/quote]

_______________________________________________
Veritas-bu maillist - Veritas-bu < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
http://mailman.eng.auburn.edu/mailman/listinfo/veritas-bu

_______________________________________________
Veritas-bu maillist - Veritas-bu < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
http://mailman.eng.auburn.edu/mailman/listinfo/veritas-bu

Come on, man. Can't give away everything! ;)

---
W. Curtis Preston
Backup Blog < at > www.backupcentral.com
VP Data Protection, GlassHouse Technologies

-----Original Message-----
From: Martin, Jonathan [mailto]
Sent: Friday, September 21, 2007 11:16 AM
To: Curtis Preston; veritas-bu < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
Subject: RE: [Veritas-bu] Tapeless backup environments?

I stand corrected. Curtis has all the answers and he's sitting on them.
=P

Worrying about multiplexing settings and tape failures? Come on, that's
about as soft a cost as you can dream up.

-Jonathan

-----Original Message-----
From: Curtis Preston [mailto]
Sent: Friday, September 21, 2007 2:06 PM
To: Martin, Jonathan; veritas-bu < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
Subject: RE: [Veritas-bu] Tapeless backup environments?

Oh, I wouldn't say that. ;) We've been doing a lot of comparisons
lately, and the comparisons include all of what you listed plus the cost
differential in cost of operation. For example, opex savings from not
having to worry about multiplexing settings, tape failures, etc.

---
W. Curtis Preston
Backup Blog < at > www.backupcentral.com
VP Data Protection, GlassHouse Technologies

-----Original Message-----
From: veritas-bu-bounces < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
[mailto] On Behalf Of Martin,
Jonathan
Sent: Friday, September 21, 2007 10:37 AM
To: veritas-bu < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
Subject: Re: [Veritas-bu] Tapeless backup environments?

I think what I'm reading here is that no one has done a true 1-to-1
comparison on Tape versus Deduplication / disk. I guess the next
question is, what would go into such a comparison?

1) Recovery Point Objective
2) Amount of Data To Be Backed Up
3) Retention
4) Cost of Hardware (Deduplication Appliance w/ Disk)
5) Cost of Hardware (Tape Library)
6) Annual Maintenance on Hardware Above
7) Cost of Media w/ Replacement Figures
8) Cost to power / cool disks (infrastructure)
9) Cost of Network link to remote site for de-dupe
10) Cost of Media Transportation and Storage

Price per GB unless factoring in at least all of the above is useless
and much of that information depends on configuration. I did such an
analysis when we upgraded to NBU6 and considered deduplication this time
last year. In my case, many of the features of disk based deduplication
weren't applicable to my situation (especially RPO) so tape was easily
cheaper. If you are shipping media offsite daily though for a >=1 day
RPO then deduplication definitely makes a play. Further price per gig
on the disk side has been heavily influenced by "consumer grade" SATA
drives at 750gb and 1TB bringing costs way down in comparison to only 1
or 2 years ago.

There's certainly a lot of data to injest before making claims of either
technology's superiority in a particular environment.

-Jonathan

-----Original Message-----
From: veritas-bu-bounces < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
[mailto] On Behalf Of Curtis
Preston
Sent: Friday, September 21, 2007 1:10 PM
To: Justin Piszcz; Jeff Lightner
Cc: veritas-bu < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
Subject: Re: [Veritas-bu] Tapeless backup environments?

First, you can't compare the cost of disk and tape directly like that.
You have to include the drives and robots. A drive by itself is useful;
a tape by itself is not.

Setting that aside, if I put that disk in a system that's doing 20:1
de-duplication, my cost is now 1.65c/GB vs your 3-9c/GB.

---
W. Curtis Preston
Backup Blog < at > www.backupcentral.com
VP Data Protection, GlassHouse Technologies

-----Original Message-----
From: veritas-bu-bounces < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
[mailto] On Behalf Of Justin
Piszcz
Sent: Friday, September 21, 2007 7:36 AM
To: Jeff Lightner
Cc: veritas-bu < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
Subject: Re: [Veritas-bu] Tapeless backup environments?

I believe disks are 33c/gigabyte and tapes are 3-9cents/gigabyte or even

cheaper, I do not remember the exact figures, but someone I know has
done a cost analysis and tapes were by far cheaper. Also something that
nobody calculates is the cost of power to keep disks spinning.

Justin.

On Fri, 21 Sep 2007, Jeff Lightner wrote:

[quote]Disk is not cheaper? You've done a cost analysis?

Not saying you're wrong and I haven't done an analysis but I'd be
surprised if disks didn't actually work out to be cheaper over time:

1) Tapes age/break - We buy on average several hundred tapes a year -
support on a disk array for failing disks may or may not be more
expensive.

2) Transport/storage - We have to pay for offsite storage and transfer
[/quote]-
[quote]it seems just putting an array in offsite facility would eliminate the
[/quote]
[quote]need for transportation (in trucks) cost. Of course there would be
[/quote]cost
[quote]in the data transfer disk to disk but since everyone seems to have
connectivity over the internet it might be possible to do this using a
[/quote]
[quote]B2B link rather than via dedicated circuits.

3) Labor cost in dealing with mechanical failures of robots. This
[/quote]one
[quote]is hidden in salary but every time I have to work on a robot it means
[/quote]I
[quote]can't be working on something else. While disk drives fail it
[/quote]doesn't
[quote]seem to happen nearly as often as having to fish a tape out of a drive
[/quote]
[quote]or the tape drive itself having failed.

-----Original Message-----
From: Justin Piszcz [mailto]
Sent: Friday, September 21, 2007 10:08 AM
To: Jeff Lightner
Cc: veritas-bu < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
Subject: Re: [Veritas-bu] Tapeless backup environments?

On Fri, 21 Sep 2007, Jeff Lightner wrote:

[quote]Yesterday our director said that he doesn't intend to ever upgrade
existing STK L700 because eventually we'll go tapeless as that is
[/quote][/quote]what
[quote][quote]the industry is doing. The idea being we'd have our disk backup
devices here (e.g. Data Domain) and transfer to offsite storage to
another disk device so as to eliminate the need for ever transporting
[/quote][/quote]
[quote][quote]tapes.

It made me wonder if anyone was actually doing the above already or
[/quote]was
[quote]planning to do so?

[/quote]
That seems to be the way people are 'thinking' but the bottom line is
disk still is not cheaper than LTO-3 tape and there are a lot of
advantages to tape; however, convicing management of this is an uphill
[/quote]
[quote]battle.

Justin.
----------------------------------

CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE: This e-mail may contain privileged or
[/quote]confidential information and is for the sole use of the intended
recipient(s). If you are not the intended recipient, any disclosure,
copying, distribution, or use of the contents of this information is
prohibited and may be unlawful. If you have received this electronic
transmission in error, please reply immediately to the sender that you
have received the message in error, and delete it. Thank you.
[quote]
----------------------------------

[/quote]_______________________________________________
Veritas-bu maillist - Veritas-bu < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
http://mailman.eng.auburn.edu/mailman/listinfo/veritas-bu

_______________________________________________
Veritas-bu maillist - Veritas-bu < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
http://mailman.eng.auburn.edu/mailman/listinfo/veritas-bu

_______________________________________________
Veritas-bu maillist - Veritas-bu < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
http://mailman.eng.auburn.edu/mailman/listinfo/veritas-bu

_______________________________________________
Veritas-bu maillist - Veritas-bu < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
http://mailman.eng.auburn.edu/mailman/listinfo/veritas-bu

/Steve

On Fri, 21 Sep 2007, Martin, Jonathan wrote:

[quote]I stand corrected. Curtis has all the answers and he's sitting on them.
=P

Worrying about multiplexing settings and tape failures? Come on, that's
about as soft a cost as you can dream up.

-Jonathan

-----Original Message-----
From: Curtis Preston [mailto]
Sent: Friday, September 21, 2007 2:06 PM
To: Martin, Jonathan; veritas-bu < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
Subject: RE: [Veritas-bu] Tapeless backup environments?

Oh, I wouldn't say that. ;) We've been doing a lot of comparisons
lately, and the comparisons include all of what you listed plus the cost
differential in cost of operation. For example, opex savings from not
having to worry about multiplexing settings, tape failures, etc.

---
W. Curtis Preston
Backup Blog < at > www.backupcentral.com
VP Data Protection, GlassHouse Technologies

-----Original Message-----
From: veritas-bu-bounces < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
[mailto] On Behalf Of Martin,
Jonathan
Sent: Friday, September 21, 2007 10:37 AM
To: veritas-bu < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
Subject: Re: [Veritas-bu] Tapeless backup environments?

I think what I'm reading here is that no one has done a true 1-to-1
comparison on Tape versus Deduplication / disk. I guess the next
question is, what would go into such a comparison?

1) Recovery Point Objective
2) Amount of Data To Be Backed Up
3) Retention
4) Cost of Hardware (Deduplication Appliance w/ Disk)
5) Cost of Hardware (Tape Library)
6) Annual Maintenance on Hardware Above
7) Cost of Media w/ Replacement Figures
8) Cost to power / cool disks (infrastructure)
9) Cost of Network link to remote site for de-dupe
10) Cost of Media Transportation and Storage

Price per GB unless factoring in at least all of the above is useless
and much of that information depends on configuration. I did such an
analysis when we upgraded to NBU6 and considered deduplication this time
last year. In my case, many of the features of disk based deduplication
weren't applicable to my situation (especially RPO) so tape was easily
cheaper. If you are shipping media offsite daily though for a >=1 day
RPO then deduplication definitely makes a play. Further price per gig
on the disk side has been heavily influenced by "consumer grade" SATA
drives at 750gb and 1TB bringing costs way down in comparison to only 1
or 2 years ago.

There's certainly a lot of data to injest before making claims of either
technology's superiority in a particular environment.

-Jonathan

-----Original Message-----
From: veritas-bu-bounces < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
[mailto] On Behalf Of Curtis
Preston
Sent: Friday, September 21, 2007 1:10 PM
To: Justin Piszcz; Jeff Lightner
Cc: veritas-bu < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
Subject: Re: [Veritas-bu] Tapeless backup environments?

First, you can't compare the cost of disk and tape directly like that.
You have to include the drives and robots. A drive by itself is useful;
a tape by itself is not.

Setting that aside, if I put that disk in a system that's doing 20:1
de-duplication, my cost is now 1.65c/GB vs your 3-9c/GB.

---
W. Curtis Preston
Backup Blog < at > www.backupcentral.com
VP Data Protection, GlassHouse Technologies

-----Original Message-----
From: veritas-bu-bounces < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
[mailto] On Behalf Of Justin
Piszcz
Sent: Friday, September 21, 2007 7:36 AM
To: Jeff Lightner
Cc: veritas-bu < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
Subject: Re: [Veritas-bu] Tapeless backup environments?

I believe disks are 33c/gigabyte and tapes are 3-9cents/gigabyte or even

cheaper, I do not remember the exact figures, but someone I know has
done a cost analysis and tapes were by far cheaper. Also something that
nobody calculates is the cost of power to keep disks spinning.

Justin.

On Fri, 21 Sep 2007, Jeff Lightner wrote:

[quote]Disk is not cheaper? You've done a cost analysis?

Not saying you're wrong and I haven't done an analysis but I'd be
surprised if disks didn't actually work out to be cheaper over time:

1) Tapes age/break - We buy on average several hundred tapes a year -
support on a disk array for failing disks may or may not be more
expensive.

2) Transport/storage - We have to pay for offsite storage and transfer
[/quote]-
[quote]it seems just putting an array in offsite facility would eliminate the
[/quote]
[quote]need for transportation (in trucks) cost. Of course there would be
[/quote]cost
[quote]in the data transfer disk to disk but since everyone seems to have
connectivity over the internet it might be possible to do this using a
[/quote]
[quote]B2B link rather than via dedicated circuits.

3) Labor cost in dealing with mechanical failures of robots. This
[/quote]one
[quote]is hidden in salary but every time I have to work on a robot it means
[/quote]I
[quote]can't be working on something else. While disk drives fail it
[/quote]doesn't
[quote]seem to happen nearly as often as having to fish a tape out of a drive
[/quote]
[quote]or the tape drive itself having failed.

-----Original Message-----
From: Justin Piszcz [mailto]
Sent: Friday, September 21, 2007 10:08 AM
To: Jeff Lightner
Cc: veritas-bu < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
Subject: Re: [Veritas-bu] Tapeless backup environments?

On Fri, 21 Sep 2007, Jeff Lightner wrote:

[quote]Yesterday our director said that he doesn't intend to ever upgrade
existing STK L700 because eventually we'll go tapeless as that is
[/quote][/quote]what
[quote][quote]the industry is doing. The idea being we'd have our disk backup
devices here (e.g. Data Domain) and transfer to offsite storage to
another disk device so as to eliminate the need for ever transporting
[/quote][/quote]
[quote][quote]tapes.

It made me wonder if anyone was actually doing the above already or
[/quote]was
[quote]planning to do so?

[/quote]
That seems to be the way people are 'thinking' but the bottom line is
disk still is not cheaper than LTO-3 tape and there are a lot of
advantages to tape; however, convicing management of this is an uphill
[/quote]
[quote]battle.

Justin.
----------------------------------

CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE: This e-mail may contain privileged or
[/quote]confidential information and is for the sole use of the intended
recipient(s). If you are not the intended recipient, any disclosure,
copying, distribution, or use of the contents of this information is
prohibited and may be unlawful. If you have received this electronic
transmission in error, please reply immediately to the sender that you
have received the message in error, and delete it. Thank you.
[quote]
----------------------------------

[/quote]_______________________________________________
Veritas-bu maillist - Veritas-bu < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
http://mailman.eng.auburn.edu/mailman/listinfo/veritas-bu

_______________________________________________
Veritas-bu maillist - Veritas-bu < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
http://mailman.eng.auburn.edu/mailman/listinfo/veritas-bu

_______________________________________________
Veritas-bu maillist - Veritas-bu < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
http://mailman.eng.auburn.edu/mailman/listinfo/veritas-bu

_______________________________________________
Veritas-bu maillist - Veritas-bu < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
http://mailman.eng.auburn.edu/mailman/listinfo/veritas-bu

[/quote]_______________________________________________
Veritas-bu maillist - Veritas-bu < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
http://mailman.eng.auburn.edu/mailman/listinfo/veritas-bu

When we put in our backup to disk system the main driving factor was the
point in time recovery and replication. We use the system to backup
critical data for business continuity and then replicate it to our DR
site. This gives us point in time recovery of about 24 hours or less.

When we compared tape to disk we found that although the disk backup was
more expensive it wasn't prohibitively so. And the benefit of the point
in time recovery of 24 hours or less made it the best solution for our
needs.

-----Original Message-----
From: veritas-bu-bounces < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
[mailto] On Behalf Of Martin,
Jonathan
Sent: Friday, September 21, 2007 12:37 PM
To: veritas-bu < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
Subject: Re: [Veritas-bu] Tapeless backup environments?

I think what I'm reading here is that no one has done a true 1-to-1
comparison on Tape versus Deduplication / disk. I guess the next
question is, what would go into such a comparison?

1) Recovery Point Objective
2) Amount of Data To Be Backed Up
3) Retention
4) Cost of Hardware (Deduplication Appliance w/ Disk)
5) Cost of Hardware (Tape Library)
6) Annual Maintenance on Hardware Above
7) Cost of Media w/ Replacement Figures
8) Cost to power / cool disks (infrastructure)
9) Cost of Network link to remote site for de-dupe
10) Cost of Media Transportation and Storage

Price per GB unless factoring in at least all of the above is useless
and much of that information depends on configuration. I did such an
analysis when we upgraded to NBU6 and considered deduplication this time
last year. In my case, many of the features of disk based deduplication
weren't applicable to my situation (especially RPO) so tape was easily
cheaper. If you are shipping media offsite daily though for a >=1 day
RPO then deduplication definitely makes a play. Further price per gig
on the disk side has been heavily influenced by "consumer grade" SATA
drives at 750gb and 1TB bringing costs way down in comparison to only 1
or 2 years ago.

There's certainly a lot of data to injest before making claims of either
technology's superiority in a particular environment.

-Jonathan

-----Original Message-----
From: veritas-bu-bounces < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
[mailto] On Behalf Of Curtis
Preston
Sent: Friday, September 21, 2007 1:10 PM
To: Justin Piszcz; Jeff Lightner
Cc: veritas-bu < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
Subject: Re: [Veritas-bu] Tapeless backup environments?

First, you can't compare the cost of disk and tape directly like that.
You have to include the drives and robots. A drive by itself is useful;
a tape by itself is not.

Setting that aside, if I put that disk in a system that's doing 20:1
de-duplication, my cost is now 1.65c/GB vs your 3-9c/GB.

---
W. Curtis Preston
Backup Blog < at > www.backupcentral.com
VP Data Protection, GlassHouse Technologies

-----Original Message-----
From: veritas-bu-bounces < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
[mailto] On Behalf Of Justin
Piszcz
Sent: Friday, September 21, 2007 7:36 AM
To: Jeff Lightner
Cc: veritas-bu < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
Subject: Re: [Veritas-bu] Tapeless backup environments?

I believe disks are 33c/gigabyte and tapes are 3-9cents/gigabyte or even

cheaper, I do not remember the exact figures, but someone I know has
done a cost analysis and tapes were by far cheaper. Also something that
nobody calculates is the cost of power to keep disks spinning.

Justin.

On Fri, 21 Sep 2007, Jeff Lightner wrote:

[quote]Disk is not cheaper? You've done a cost analysis?

Not saying you're wrong and I haven't done an analysis but I'd be
surprised if disks didn't actually work out to be cheaper over time:

1) Tapes age/break - We buy on average several hundred tapes a year -
support on a disk array for failing disks may or may not be more
expensive.

2) Transport/storage - We have to pay for offsite storage and transfer
[/quote]-
[quote]it seems just putting an array in offsite facility would eliminate the
[/quote]
[quote]need for transportation (in trucks) cost. Of course there would be
[/quote]cost
[quote]in the data transfer disk to disk but since everyone seems to have
connectivity over the internet it might be possible to do this using a
[/quote]
[quote]B2B link rather than via dedicated circuits.

3) Labor cost in dealing with mechanical failures of robots. This
[/quote]one
[quote]is hidden in salary but every time I have to work on a robot it means
[/quote]I
[quote]can't be working on something else. While disk drives fail it
[/quote]doesn't
[quote]seem to happen nearly as often as having to fish a tape out of a drive
[/quote]
[quote]or the tape drive itself having failed.

-----Original Message-----
From: Justin Piszcz [mailto]
Sent: Friday, September 21, 2007 10:08 AM
To: Jeff Lightner
Cc: veritas-bu < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
Subject: Re: [Veritas-bu] Tapeless backup environments?

On Fri, 21 Sep 2007, Jeff Lightner wrote:

[quote]Yesterday our director said that he doesn't intend to ever upgrade
existing STK L700 because eventually we'll go tapeless as that is
[/quote][/quote]what
[quote][quote]the industry is doing. The idea being we'd have our disk backup
devices here (e.g. Data Domain) and transfer to offsite storage to
another disk device so as to eliminate the need for ever transporting
[/quote][/quote]
[quote][quote]tapes.

It made me wonder if anyone was actually doing the above already or
[/quote]was
[quote]planning to do so?

[/quote]
That seems to be the way people are 'thinking' but the bottom line is
disk still is not cheaper than LTO-3 tape and there are a lot of
advantages to tape; however, convicing management of this is an uphill
[/quote]
[quote]battle.

Justin.
----------------------------------

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[/quote]confidential information and is for the sole use of the intended
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copying, distribution, or use of the contents of this information is
prohibited and may be unlawful. If you have received this electronic
transmission in error, please reply immediately to the sender that you
have received the message in error, and delete it. Thank you.
[quote]
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On 9/21/07, Jeff Lightner <jlightner < at > water.com> wrote:
[quote]
Yesterday our director said that he doesn't intend to ever upgrade existing
STK L700 because eventually we'll go tapeless as that is what the industry
is doing.
[/quote]<snip>

Tape has been "dying" for 30 years.
http://searchstoragechannel.techtarget.com/originalContent/0,289142,sid98_gci1237881,00.html

An article on Slashdot this morning described "the 5 biggest SANs".
It was interesting to see that NASA's SAN "includes 1.1 Pbytes of disk
and 10 Pbytes of tape storage" and the SAN at the San Diego
Supercomputing Center has about "1 Pbyte disk and 18 Pbytes of tape
storage".
http://www.byteandswitch.com/document.asp?doc_id=134355&WT.svl=news1_1

Austin
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I agree, disk may not be cheaper BUT one can choose what disk one should
use for backups (Tier1 to Tier 4).

As we have seen in earlier posts there is a fair amount of work to be
done in maintaining VTL tapes which have expired (a salary cost). If
your master and media servers have been setup correctly you will find
that writing to tape is faster as you can send multiple data streams to
the tape AND the tape drive does the compression.

Compression on a VTL is done by the operating system (normally LINUX)
which we all know is a slow process and therefore not recommended. Your
VTL supplier will also recommend that you do not multistream as this
also slows down the process.

If you want to use disk to disk backups, then do just that! It is
available in version 6.0 and 6.5. 6.5 also has a de-duplication facility
which will save you space on the disk (you can choice from 1 Tier to 4
Tier) and the raid group you would like to use AND 6.5 has a replication
facility to replicate the disk image off site.

If your management insist on VTL, my advice is to get the supplier to do
a face off between tape and VTL. Don't be intimidated by them! All VTL
vendors use SCSI emulation which has an overhead cost to it (they may
deny this but it is fact). They will promise you that offsite storage is
simple. Let them demonstrate life. Don't be fooled by their added media
server. It all a pain and a lot more work, as well as being costly.

Tape will remain cheaper and the tape drive manufacturers are fighting
hard to keep tape that why, with larger capacity and faster drives, this
despite the fact that they know that tape has beginning to reach the end
of its life cycle.

If you abandon tape rather go for disk to disk as it is easier faster
and safer. If you are not cash critical rather go for Veritas Storage
Foundation as the snap shot technology will allow to create a snap shot
an any available disk on any array, which is attached to the SAN. It has
all the tools included in the product that you will have to purchase
from disk array suppliers at an enormous cost. The replication will also
guarantee your data arrives at the offsite facility and is recoverable.
Oracle backups can be at block level saving an incredible amount of time
and backup space.

Clem.

-----Original Message-----
From: veritas-bu-bounces < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
[mailto] On Behalf Of Jeff
Lightner
Sent: 21 September 2007 16:34 PM
To: Justin Piszcz
Cc: veritas-bu < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
Subject: Re: [Veritas-bu] Tapeless backup environments?

Disk is not cheaper? You've done a cost analysis?

Not saying you're wrong and I haven't done an analysis but I'd be
surprised if disks didn't actually work out to be cheaper over time:

1) Tapes age/break - We buy on average several hundred tapes a year -
support on a disk array for failing disks may or may not be more
expensive.

2) Transport/storage - We have to pay for offsite storage and transfer -
it seems just putting an array in offsite facility would eliminate the
need for transportation (in trucks) cost. Of course there would be cost
in the data transfer disk to disk but since everyone seems to have
connectivity over the internet it might be possible to do this using a
B2B link rather than via dedicated circuits.

3) Labor cost in dealing with mechanical failures of robots. This one
is hidden in salary but every time I have to work on a robot it means I
can't be working on something else. While disk drives fail it doesn't
seem to happen nearly as often as having to fish a tape out of a drive
or the tape drive itself having failed.

-----Original Message-----
From: Justin Piszcz [mailto]
Sent: Friday, September 21, 2007 10:08 AM
To: Jeff Lightner
Cc: veritas-bu < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
Subject: Re: [Veritas-bu] Tapeless backup environments?

On Fri, 21 Sep 2007, Jeff Lightner wrote:

[quote]Yesterday our director said that he doesn't intend to ever upgrade
existing STK L700 because eventually we'll go tapeless as that is what
the industry is doing. The idea being we'd have our disk backup
devices here (e.g. Data Domain) and transfer to offsite storage to
another disk device so as to eliminate the need for ever transporting
tapes.

It made me wonder if anyone was actually doing the above already or
[/quote]was
[quote]planning to do so?

[/quote]
That seems to be the way people are 'thinking' but the bottom line is
disk
still is not cheaper than LTO-3 tape and there are a lot of advantages
to
tape; however, convicing management of this is an uphill battle.

Justin.
----------------------------------

CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE: This e-mail may contain privileged or
confidential information and is for the sole use of the intended
recipient(s). If you are not the intended recipient, any disclosure,
copying, distribution, or use of the contents of this information is
prohibited and may be unlawful. If you have received this electronic
transmission in error, please reply immediately to the sender that you
have received the message in error, and delete it. Thank you.

----------------------------------

_______________________________________________
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Here&#8217;s some simple math that may help (complements of ExaGrid&#8217;s web site).

If you have 1TB of data with a 2% change rate, you&#8217;ll need to back up 20GB of daily incrementals. To replicate this to another site in 18 hours requires 3Mbps of bandwidth. If you have lots of bandwidth or not too much data, replication to an offsite location may make sense. But to think that you can replicate your backups for 20TB of data to another state is going to make your network group squirm. Iron Mountain looks pretty cheap comparing to offsite electronic replication.

We have 1 application by itself that adds 30GB of new data every day. It&#8217;s being replicated within the metro area over a 1Gbps pipe (real time, not via backups). We sure couldn&#8217;t replicate everything&#8230;

As the OLD saying goes, never understand the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes.

&#8230;/Ed

--
Ed Wilts, RHCE, BCFP, BCSD
Mounds View, MN, USA
mailto:ewilts < at > ewilts.org

[b]From:[/b] veritas-bu-bounces < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu [mailto] [b]On Behalf Of [/b]Jeff Lightner
[b]Sent:[/b] Friday, September 21, 2007 8:44 AM
[b]To:[/b] veritas-bu < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
[b]Subject:[/b] [Veritas-bu] Tapeless backup environments?

Yesterday our director said that he doesn&#8217;t intend to ever upgrade existing STK L700 because eventually we&#8217;ll go tapeless as that is what the industry is doing. The idea being we&#8217;d have our disk backup devices here (e.g. Data Domain) and transfer to offsite storage to another disk device so as to eliminate the need for ever transporting tapes.
It made me wonder if anyone was actually doing the above already or was planning to do so?

1) Disk ages and breaks too.
2) Transport is cheap. I'd be surprised if I couldn't transport a thousand
tapes for the cost of a terabyte of storage. Bandwidth to move data is
*NOT* cheap. 20GB/day requires 3Mbps of pipe.
3) I spend more time replacing disk drives than I do replacing tapes or
tape drives. To back up my 1200 SAN-based spindles, I have 6 LTO-3 drives.
It sounds like you need to either replace your tape drives or treat them
better. We do work on our robots perhaps once every few months. We replace
disk drives on a weekly basis. NetBackup requires a *lot* more time than
the robots or the disk drives ever will.

.../Ed

--
Ed Wilts, RHCE, BCFP, BCSD
Mounds View, MN, USA
mailto:ewilts < at > ewilts.org

[quote]-----Original Message-----
From: veritas-bu-bounces < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu [mailto] On Behalf Of Jeff Lightner
Sent: Friday, September 21, 2007 9:34 AM
To: Justin Piszcz
Cc: veritas-bu < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
Subject: Re: [Veritas-bu] Tapeless backup environments?

Disk is not cheaper? You've done a cost analysis?

Not saying you're wrong and I haven't done an analysis but I'd be
surprised if disks didn't actually work out to be cheaper over time:

1) Tapes age/break - We buy on average several hundred tapes a year -
support on a disk array for failing disks may or may not be more
expensive.

2) Transport/storage - We have to pay for offsite storage and transfer
-
it seems just putting an array in offsite facility would eliminate the
need for transportation (in trucks) cost. Of course there would be
cost
in the data transfer disk to disk but since everyone seems to have
connectivity over the internet it might be possible to do this using a
B2B link rather than via dedicated circuits.

3) Labor cost in dealing with mechanical failures of robots. This one
is hidden in salary but every time I have to work on a robot it means I
can't be working on something else. While disk drives fail it doesn't
seem to happen nearly as often as having to fish a tape out of a drive
or the tape drive itself having failed.

-----Original Message-----
From: Justin Piszcz [mailto]
Sent: Friday, September 21, 2007 10:08 AM
To: Jeff Lightner
Cc: veritas-bu < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
Subject: Re: [Veritas-bu] Tapeless backup environments?

On Fri, 21 Sep 2007, Jeff Lightner wrote:

[quote]Yesterday our director said that he doesn't intend to ever upgrade
existing STK L700 because eventually we'll go tapeless as that is
[/quote]what
[quote]the industry is doing. The idea being we'd have our disk backup
devices here (e.g. Data Domain) and transfer to offsite storage to
another disk device so as to eliminate the need for ever transporting
tapes.

It made me wonder if anyone was actually doing the above already or
[/quote]was
[quote]planning to do so?

[/quote]
That seems to be the way people are 'thinking' but the bottom line is
disk
still is not cheaper than LTO-3 tape and there are a lot of advantages
to
tape; however, convicing management of this is an uphill battle.

Justin.
[/quote]
_______________________________________________
Veritas-bu maillist - Veritas-bu < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
http://mailman.eng.auburn.edu/mailman/listinfo/veritas-bu

But Curtis, a disk drive by itself isn't very useful either - you'll need to
a controller or two.

And don't forget to factor in the price of the de-duplication appliances or
software. Those suckers are *NOT* cheap. An appliance to support 1TB of
compressed data lists out at about $20K. Unless you get a *lot* of
de-duplication - and not everybody does - that appliance is going to get
killed on price compared to not de-duping it.

It took me only 30 minutes with a de-dupe vendor last week to eliminate
their product from consideration in our environment.

.../Ed

--
Ed Wilts, RHCE, BCFP, BCSD
Mounds View, MN, USA
mailto:ewilts < at > ewilts.org

[quote]-----Original Message-----
From: veritas-bu-bounces < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu [mailto] On Behalf Of Curtis Preston
Sent: Friday, September 21, 2007 12:10 PM
To: Justin Piszcz; Jeff Lightner
Cc: veritas-bu < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
Subject: Re: [Veritas-bu] Tapeless backup environments?

First, you can't compare the cost of disk and tape directly like that.
You have to include the drives and robots. A drive by itself is
useful;
a tape by itself is not.

Setting that aside, if I put that disk in a system that's doing 20:1
de-duplication, my cost is now 1.65c/GB vs your 3-9c/GB.

---
W. Curtis Preston
Backup Blog < at > www.backupcentral.com
VP Data Protection, GlassHouse Technologies

-----Original Message-----
From: veritas-bu-bounces < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
[mailto] On Behalf Of Justin
Piszcz
Sent: Friday, September 21, 2007 7:36 AM
To: Jeff Lightner
Cc: veritas-bu < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
Subject: Re: [Veritas-bu] Tapeless backup environments?

I believe disks are 33c/gigabyte and tapes are 3-9cents/gigabyte or
even

cheaper, I do not remember the exact figures, but someone I know has
done
a cost analysis and tapes were by far cheaper. Also something that
nobody
calculates is the cost of power to keep disks spinning.

Justin.

On Fri, 21 Sep 2007, Jeff Lightner wrote:

[quote]Disk is not cheaper? You've done a cost analysis?

Not saying you're wrong and I haven't done an analysis but I'd be
surprised if disks didn't actually work out to be cheaper over time:

1) Tapes age/break - We buy on average several hundred tapes a year -
support on a disk array for failing disks may or may not be more
expensive.

2) Transport/storage - We have to pay for offsite storage and
[/quote]transfer
-
[quote]it seems just putting an array in offsite facility would eliminate
[/quote]the
[quote]need for transportation (in trucks) cost. Of course there would be
[/quote]cost
[quote]in the data transfer disk to disk but since everyone seems to have
connectivity over the internet it might be possible to do this using
[/quote]a
[quote]B2B link rather than via dedicated circuits.

3) Labor cost in dealing with mechanical failures of robots. This
[/quote]one
[quote]is hidden in salary but every time I have to work on a robot it means
[/quote]I
[quote]can't be working on something else. While disk drives fail it
[/quote]doesn't
[quote]seem to happen nearly as often as having to fish a tape out of a
[/quote]drive
[quote]or the tape drive itself having failed.

-----Original Message-----
From: Justin Piszcz [mailto]
Sent: Friday, September 21, 2007 10:08 AM
To: Jeff Lightner
Cc: veritas-bu < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
Subject: Re: [Veritas-bu] Tapeless backup environments?

On Fri, 21 Sep 2007, Jeff Lightner wrote:

[quote]Yesterday our director said that he doesn't intend to ever upgrade
existing STK L700 because eventually we'll go tapeless as that is
[/quote][/quote]what
[quote][quote]the industry is doing. The idea being we'd have our disk backup
devices here (e.g. Data Domain) and transfer to offsite storage to
another disk device so as to eliminate the need for ever
[/quote][/quote]transporting
[quote][quote]tapes.

It made me wonder if anyone was actually doing the above already or
[/quote]was
[quote]planning to do so?

[/quote]
That seems to be the way people are 'thinking' but the bottom line is
disk
still is not cheaper than LTO-3 tape and there are a lot of
[/quote]advantages
[quote]to
tape; however, convicing management of this is an uphill battle.

Justin.
[/quote][/quote]
_______________________________________________
Veritas-bu maillist - Veritas-bu < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
http://mailman.eng.auburn.edu/mailman/listinfo/veritas-bu

Don't even get me started on SANs, I have seen the entire loss of an MTI
(now EMC) SAN and with the new Claiiron SANS I have seen entire shelves go
off-line due to bad SPAs etc, IMO not reliable.

Also with disk, I have a question with VTLs, etc, if I am feeding multiple
LTO-3 tape drives using 10Gbps; what type of disk/VTL (not SAN) is out
there that can accept multiple 10Gbps streams/data and will not choke?

VTLs seem like a good idea for filesystem backups but for on-demand
database backups, I do not see them as the holy grail.

Justin.

On Sat, 22 Sep 2007, Ed Wilts wrote:

[quote]1) Disk ages and breaks too.
2) Transport is cheap. I'd be surprised if I couldn't transport a thousand
tapes for the cost of a terabyte of storage. Bandwidth to move data is
*NOT* cheap. 20GB/day requires 3Mbps of pipe.
3) I spend more time replacing disk drives than I do replacing tapes or
tape drives. To back up my 1200 SAN-based spindles, I have 6 LTO-3 drives.
It sounds like you need to either replace your tape drives or treat them
better. We do work on our robots perhaps once every few months. We replace
disk drives on a weekly basis. NetBackup requires a *lot* more time than
the robots or the disk drives ever will.

.../Ed

--
Ed Wilts, RHCE, BCFP, BCSD
Mounds View, MN, USA
mailto:ewilts < at > ewilts.org

[quote]-----Original Message-----
From: veritas-bu-bounces < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu [mailto] On Behalf Of Jeff Lightner
Sent: Friday, September 21, 2007 9:34 AM
To: Justin Piszcz
Cc: veritas-bu < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
Subject: Re: [Veritas-bu] Tapeless backup environments?

Disk is not cheaper? You've done a cost analysis?

Not saying you're wrong and I haven't done an analysis but I'd be
surprised if disks didn't actually work out to be cheaper over time:

1) Tapes age/break - We buy on average several hundred tapes a year -
support on a disk array for failing disks may or may not be more
expensive.

2) Transport/storage - We have to pay for offsite storage and transfer
-
it seems just putting an array in offsite facility would eliminate the
need for transportation (in trucks) cost. Of course there would be
cost
in the data transfer disk to disk but since everyone seems to have
connectivity over the internet it might be possible to do this using a
B2B link rather than via dedicated circuits.

3) Labor cost in dealing with mechanical failures of robots. This one
is hidden in salary but every time I have to work on a robot it means I
can't be working on something else. While disk drives fail it doesn't
seem to happen nearly as often as having to fish a tape out of a drive
or the tape drive itself having failed.

-----Original Message-----
From: Justin Piszcz [mailto]
Sent: Friday, September 21, 2007 10:08 AM
To: Jeff Lightner
Cc: veritas-bu < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
Subject: Re: [Veritas-bu] Tapeless backup environments?

On Fri, 21 Sep 2007, Jeff Lightner wrote:

[quote]Yesterday our director said that he doesn't intend to ever upgrade
existing STK L700 because eventually we'll go tapeless as that is
[/quote]what
[quote]the industry is doing. The idea being we'd have our disk backup
devices here (e.g. Data Domain) and transfer to offsite storage to
another disk device so as to eliminate the need for ever transporting
tapes.

It made me wonder if anyone was actually doing the above already or
[/quote]was
[quote]planning to do so?

[/quote]
That seems to be the way people are 'thinking' but the bottom line is
disk
still is not cheaper than LTO-3 tape and there are a lot of advantages
to
tape; however, convicing management of this is an uphill battle.

Justin.
[/quote]
[/quote]_______________________________________________
Veritas-bu maillist - Veritas-bu < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
http://mailman.eng.auburn.edu/mailman/listinfo/veritas-bu

[quote] [quote] Curtis - Although I agree with the other responses you have given out with respect to the tape vs. disk cost I am not sure about your statements below.

Going back for a second to the cost of tape vs. disk... if you do an analysis make sure to take all things into account when you backup to tape. This is why most people don't get a proper cost associated with tape backup i.e:
1. SAN ports
2. Tape drives -> fixing them, lost time, shoe-shining
3. media cost -> fixing media, media failure cost(cost of not being able to do a restore)
4. off siting -> the cycles/dollars lost in handling that internally, the cost of dealing with Recall/Iron Mountain (or whoever), the cost associated with the delay in waiting for a tape to be recalled...
5. library maintenance cost
6. restore duration cost (i.e. if i have 100 people waiting for a Tier 1 server to be restored...)
Anyways the list of "invisible costs" associated with tapes go on...

As for your EMC CDL comments... First I believe they are now called EDL (EMC Disk Libraries) because they take into account their new Symmetrix backend devices. Although I agree with you that de-dup is important to the future of backups you make it seem that it should be the only deciding factor in a purchase! If you push de-dup aside for a second what do most customers want? My guess is performance, availability, stability, integration with backup application. This has been my thought process and these de-dup companies you speak about such as Sepaton, Diligent, Data Domain all at one point or another have HUGE performance hits (i.e. we have tape drives that go faster then some of these), little capability to scale (without combining multiple devices together), or have un-explainable single points of failures.
I also agree that replication is important and if you can minimize the amount you replicate then great. Here is my dilemma: Most of the de-dup vendors out there (i.e. I am thinking of Sepaton) that can perform de-dup have only been in the replication business for a year (probably less) and have very little maturity in that space! That scares me a bit...

As for backup integration I personally like the fact that with EMC I can have a built in media server on top of my VTL and control everything from what I am familiar with... no other vendor offers that!

Anyways just my two cents... Bottom line is that I agree that de-dup is important but if you can push that aside and look at the other technical merit (assuming that all vendors will have de-dup sooner than later) suddenly the list of enterprise level candidates drops significantly from what I am seeing.

-Nicholas

[b]From:[/b] veritas-bu-bounces < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu [mailto] [b]On Behalf Of [/b]Curtis Preston
[b]Sent:[/b] Friday, September 21, 2007 1:13 PM
[b]To:[/b] Kevin Whittaker; Jeff Lightner; veritas-bu < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
[b]Subject:[/b] Re: [Veritas-bu] Tapeless backup environments?<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

The only issue there is that the EMC CDL does not support de-duplication, and it doesn’t look like they’ll be doing it any time soon. I know they’re working on it, but they haven’t announced anything public, so who knows. Compare that to the other de-dupe vendors that announced probably a year before they were ready, and you’ve got some sense of my opinion of when EMC de-dupe will actually be GA – if not later.

Your design would work great if you had de-dupe. Without de-dupe, you are going to be replicated 20 times more data (or more), requiring a significantly larger pipe.

---
W. <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />Curtis Preston
Backup Blog < at > [url=http://www.backupcentral.com/]www.backupcentral.com[/url]
VP Data Protection, GlassHouse Technologies

[b]From:[/b] veritas-bu-bounces < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu [mailto] [b]On Behalf Of [/b]Kevin Whittaker
[b]Sent:[/b] Friday, September 21, 2007 7:48 AM
[b]To:[/b] Jeff Lightner; veritas-bu < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
[b]Subject:[/b] Re: [Veritas-bu] Tapeless backup environments?

We have it on our plan. We will be using tape for only long term retention of data.

Our plan is to purchase another EMC CDL, and mirror our existing EMC CDL to the EMC CDL at our DR site. Our master server already is duplicated, and this will allow us to start restores of stuff that is not tier 1 applications that already are mirrored to the DR site.

I would prefer not to save the long term on tape, but we don't have a solution for any other way to do it at this time.

Kevin

[b]From:[/b] veritas-bu-bounces < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu [mailto] [b]On Behalf Of [/b]Jeff Lightner
[b]Sent:[/b] Friday, September 21, 2007 9:44 AM
[b]To:[/b] veritas-bu < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
[b]Subject:[/b] [Veritas-bu] Tapeless backup environments?
Yesterday our director said that he doesn’t intend to ever upgrade existing STK L700 because eventually we’ll go tapeless as that is what the industry is doing. The idea being we’d have our disk backup devices here (e.g. Data Domain) and transfer to offsite storage to another disk device so as to eliminate the need for ever transporting tapes.
It made me wonder if anyone was actually doing the above already or was planning to do so?

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[/quote]
[/quote]

It is interesting to see the points for and against disk / tape backup
technologies play out. A worthwhile discussion.

People have mentioned management/operational/service/infrastructure
costs to justify a switch. Nobody has mentioned risk.

The problem with comparing tape / disk is they are very different
technologies and have different risk profiles subject to how you choose
to apply them.

I don't think disk was every intended to store dormant data. If it did
it would stop spinning don't you think?

So here are some of the risk profile differences to consider before you
take the leap of faith.

1. Tape can be set to dormant / shelved. Disk can not (some can - but
the ones you guys are talking about can't) so it is susceptible to
corruption, malicious intent, accidents, unauthorized and often
undetected access.

2. A tape backup set is isolated from all other tape backup sets - that
is it has few dependents. A disk backup set will often share disks with
others - that is it has many dependents. The risk grows exponentially
with deduping as the logical structure now becomes dependent upon
itself. If I can use an analogy. With deduping your kind of saying
incremental forever to tape is acceptable.

3. It would take a long time to wipe 1000 tapes. It would take a few
minutes to wipe 1000 tape volumes worth of disk and a couple of seconds
for the deduped equivalent.

If deduping was considered risk free we would be deduping our entire
Enterprise. But somehow it is acceptable for backup. I don't think
anyone would agree deduping your backups is acceptable without a tape
backup set. So why do we have deduped backups? Deduping is necessary to
make disk backup viable for a greater share of the backup market.

There is a general rule I apply to technology choices and that is with
every step forward always consider what you are compromising. In this
case it is risk. However, don't get me wrong. The compromise may be
acceptable to you. It is one of those assessments that is difficult to
quantify and therefore often misunderstood or ignored completely.

D2d2T in my mind gives you the best of both worlds (I don't agree one
was every meant to replace the other). It takes away the
unpredictability of tape transports without compromising the data's
resting place and risk profile. The key is in managing the "d" in a way
that affords you tolerance to "T" failures and growth in "D". So to make
it happen the "d" should be far superior to the "D" and "T" combined.

PS. These are my opinions not the companies I work for.

Regards
Peter Marelas
+61 400 882 651

-----Original Message-----
From: veritas-bu-bounces < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
[mailto] On Behalf Of Martin,
Jonathan
Sent: Saturday, 22 September 2007 3:37 AM
To: veritas-bu < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
Subject: Re: [Veritas-bu] Tapeless backup environments?

I think what I'm reading here is that no one has done a true 1-to-1
comparison on Tape versus Deduplication / disk. I guess the next
question is, what would go into such a comparison?

1) Recovery Point Objective
2) Amount of Data To Be Backed Up
3) Retention
4) Cost of Hardware (Deduplication Appliance w/ Disk)
5) Cost of Hardware (Tape Library)
6) Annual Maintenance on Hardware Above
7) Cost of Media w/ Replacement Figures
8) Cost to power / cool disks (infrastructure)
9) Cost of Network link to remote site for de-dupe
10) Cost of Media Transportation and Storage

Price per GB unless factoring in at least all of the above is useless
and much of that information depends on configuration. I did such an
analysis when we upgraded to NBU6 and considered deduplication this time
last year. In my case, many of the features of disk based deduplication
weren't applicable to my situation (especially RPO) so tape was easily
cheaper. If you are shipping media offsite daily though for a >=1 day
RPO then deduplication definitely makes a play. Further price per gig
on the disk side has been heavily influenced by "consumer grade" SATA
drives at 750gb and 1TB bringing costs way down in comparison to only 1
or 2 years ago.

There's certainly a lot of data to injest before making claims of either
technology's superiority in a particular environment.

-Jonathan

-----Original Message-----
From: veritas-bu-bounces < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
[mailto] On Behalf Of Curtis
Preston
Sent: Friday, September 21, 2007 1:10 PM
To: Justin Piszcz; Jeff Lightner
Cc: veritas-bu < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
Subject: Re: [Veritas-bu] Tapeless backup environments?

First, you can't compare the cost of disk and tape directly like that.
You have to include the drives and robots. A drive by itself is useful;
a tape by itself is not.

Setting that aside, if I put that disk in a system that's doing 20:1
de-duplication, my cost is now 1.65c/GB vs your 3-9c/GB.

---
W. Curtis Preston
Backup Blog < at > www.backupcentral.com
VP Data Protection, GlassHouse Technologies

-----Original Message-----
From: veritas-bu-bounces < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
[mailto] On Behalf Of Justin
Piszcz
Sent: Friday, September 21, 2007 7:36 AM
To: Jeff Lightner
Cc: veritas-bu < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
Subject: Re: [Veritas-bu] Tapeless backup environments?

I believe disks are 33c/gigabyte and tapes are 3-9cents/gigabyte or even

cheaper, I do not remember the exact figures, but someone I know has
done a cost analysis and tapes were by far cheaper. Also something that
nobody calculates is the cost of power to keep disks spinning.

Justin.

On Fri, 21 Sep 2007, Jeff Lightner wrote:

[quote]Disk is not cheaper? You've done a cost analysis?

Not saying you're wrong and I haven't done an analysis but I'd be
surprised if disks didn't actually work out to be cheaper over time:

1) Tapes age/break - We buy on average several hundred tapes a year -
support on a disk array for failing disks may or may not be more
expensive.

2) Transport/storage - We have to pay for offsite storage and transfer
[/quote]-
[quote]it seems just putting an array in offsite facility would eliminate the
[/quote]
[quote]need for transportation (in trucks) cost. Of course there would be
[/quote]cost
[quote]in the data transfer disk to disk but since everyone seems to have
connectivity over the internet it might be possible to do this using a
[/quote]
[quote]B2B link rather than via dedicated circuits.

3) Labor cost in dealing with mechanical failures of robots. This
[/quote]one
[quote]is hidden in salary but every time I have to work on a robot it means
[/quote]I
[quote]can't be working on something else. While disk drives fail it
[/quote]doesn't
[quote]seem to happen nearly as often as having to fish a tape out of a drive
[/quote]
[quote]or the tape drive itself having failed.

-----Original Message-----
From: Justin Piszcz [mailto]
Sent: Friday, September 21, 2007 10:08 AM
To: Jeff Lightner
Cc: veritas-bu < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
Subject: Re: [Veritas-bu] Tapeless backup environments?

On Fri, 21 Sep 2007, Jeff Lightner wrote:

[quote]Yesterday our director said that he doesn't intend to ever upgrade
existing STK L700 because eventually we'll go tapeless as that is
[/quote][/quote]what
[quote][quote]the industry is doing. The idea being we'd have our disk backup
devices here (e.g. Data Domain) and transfer to offsite storage to
another disk device so as to eliminate the need for ever transporting
[/quote][/quote]
[quote][quote]tapes.

It made me wonder if anyone was actually doing the above already or
[/quote]was
[quote]planning to do so?

[/quote]
That seems to be the way people are 'thinking' but the bottom line is
disk still is not cheaper than LTO-3 tape and there are a lot of
advantages to tape; however, convicing management of this is an uphill
[/quote]
[quote]battle.

Justin.
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I think one of de-duplication's benefits is that even if 2% of your file data changes it doesn't have to replicate that entire 2%. In my mind its similar to byte level replication (although an entirely different technology.) Just because Netbackup backs up 20GB of "different" files doesn't mean that you've made 20GB of changes. If that were the case I'd roll-over my file servers once a month.

I wonder after comparing the two technologies, if there is room for a "mixed mode" solution that could take advantage of both tape's and disk's benefits without creating a tough to swallow price tag.

-Jonathan

________________________________

From: veritas-bu-bounces < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu on behalf of Ed Wilts
Sent: Sat 9/22/2007 9:35 AM
To: 'Jeff Lightner'; veritas-bu < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
Subject: Re: [Veritas-bu] Tapeless backup environments?

Here's some simple math that may help (complements of ExaGrid's web site).

If you have 1TB of data with a 2% change rate, you'll need to back up 20GB of daily incrementals. To replicate this to another site in 18 hours requires 3Mbps of bandwidth. If you have lots of bandwidth or not too much data, replication to an offsite location may make sense. But to think that you can replicate your backups for 20TB of data to another state is going to make your network group squirm. Iron Mountain looks pretty cheap comparing to offsite electronic replication.

We have 1 application by itself that adds 30GB of new data every day. It's being replicated within the metro area over a 1Gbps pipe (real time, not via backups). We sure couldn't replicate everything...

As the OLD saying goes, never understand the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes.

.../Ed

--

Ed Wilts, RHCE, BCFP, BCSD

Mounds View, MN, USA

mailto:ewilts < at > ewilts.org

From: veritas-bu-bounces < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu [mailto] On Behalf Of Jeff Lightner
Sent: Friday, September 21, 2007 8:44 AM
To: veritas-bu < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
Subject: [Veritas-bu] Tapeless backup environments?

Yesterday our director said that he doesn't intend to ever upgrade existing STK L700 because eventually we'll go tapeless as that is what the industry is doing. The idea being we'd have our disk backup devices here (e.g. Data Domain) and transfer to offsite storage to another disk device so as to eliminate the need for ever transporting tapes.

It made me wonder if anyone was actually doing the above already or was planning to do so?

_______________________________________________
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