Backup Central

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:

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?


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


"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.

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:jpiszcz < at > lucidpixels.com]
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:

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?


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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_______________________________________________
Veritas-bu maillist - Veritas-bu < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
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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:

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:jpiszcz < at > lucidpixels.com]
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:

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?


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.

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


_______________________________________________
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’re annoyed at theoretical questions? wtf?


From: ckstehman < at > pepco.com [mailto:ckstehman < at > pepco.com]
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.
----------------------------------

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:ckstehman < at > pepco.com]
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.

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

From: veritas-bu-bounces < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu [mailto:veritas-bu-bounces < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu] On Behalf Of Jeff Lightner
Sent: Friday, September 21, 2007 9:44 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?

Thanks.


From: ckstehman < at > pepco.com [mailto:ckstehman < at > pepco.com]
Sent: Friday, September 21, 2007 10:46 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?



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:ckstehman < at > pepco.com]
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.
---------------------------------- _______________________________________________
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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:

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:ckstehman < at > pepco.com]
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.

_______________________________________________
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:veritas-bu-bounces < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu] 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:

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:ckstehman < at > pepco.com]
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


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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:veritas-bu-bounces < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu] 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:

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:jpiszcz < at > lucidpixels.com]
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:

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?


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


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


From: veritas-bu-bounces < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu [mailto:veritas-bu-bounces < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu] On Behalf Of Jeff Lightner
Sent: Friday, September 21, 2007 9:44 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?

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
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:veritas-bu-bounces < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu] 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:veritas-bu-bounces < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu] 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:

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:jpiszcz < at > lucidpixels.com]
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:

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?


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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_______________________________________________
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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:

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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