Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2010/03/23
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]A big advantage of automation, tape libraries, is that with multiple drives you can automate migration of data to newer format tapes. In John's case he can ujpgrade some of the drives to LTO-5 or LTO-6 and add the new higher capacity media and migrate data from the LTO-4 media to newer media. When you have many terrabytes of data those expensive tape drives start to look pretty desirable. John; the interface between the automation and the drives used to be pretty simple with each automation vendor having their own protocols. It has been replaced by a standardized protocol that is under the INCITS T10 technical committee. If you want to take a look you can download draft standards from the t10.org website. PM me if you do and I'll guide you to the right spot(s). John Nebel wrote: > Spencer, > > LTO4 tapes are around $30/ea on ebay in lots of 20. The drives are > $thousands, but one drive is infinite offline storage. > > John > > Spencer Cheng wrote: >> Hi John, >> >> Very nice. The techie in me says "Cool. Can I borrow it?" :) >> >> I am not sure I want to know how much those LT04 tapes are. :)) >> >> My home built NAS cost about $1K including 5.5Tb of disk space. Good >> enough for my purpose. Nowhere near as cool as yours though. >> >> Regards, >> Spencer >> >> On Mar 22, 2010, at 20:22, John Nebel wrote: >> >>> Hi Spencer, >>> >>> Your post motivated me to photo part of the internals of a backup >>> device, a robotic tape library with a petabyte capacity (600+ 1.6 >>> terabyte tapes). >>> >>> http://www.ancientmoney.org/library.html >>> >>> If one has the space, time, and and a bit of knowledge, things like >>> this can be acquired fairly inexpensively. I had installed a couple >>> of LTO4 tape drives, and someone in Quantum service became upset and >>> canceled a $20K/year maintenance contract - one is not allowed to >>> work on their own equipment under their rules. >>> Generally speaking, it is a reasonable position, however, not in >>> every case. Quantum left me stranded with a broken hoist cable for >>> the robotics platform, and I'd made the mistake of power-cycling the >>> library and nothing would come online. The tape drive enclosures >>> have electronic switches which only allow the drives to power up >>> after the robotic diagnostics succeed. $10 for stainless steel >>> aircraft cable (not for use in aircraft, of course) and $50 for >>> cutting and swaging tools and it was back in operation. >>> >>> Quantum gave a credit for the prepaid maintenance which bought a >>> pallet of tapes. Ultimately Quantum was apologetic and showed good >>> integrity. >>> >>> I found a used library for $5.5K which works perfectly and provides >>> the necessary backup for the backup device. >>> >>> In the process I looked into the library's controller and found its >>> OS quite comforting, Linux. The OCP is a tiny flat screen xterm with >>> a four button keyboard and the library runs Apache for its web >>> interface. I think the interface between the robotics and the >>> processor is serial with simple ascii commands. The interface >>> between the tape drives and the outside is fibre channel through >>> bridge cards. One talks to the Linux processor over ethernet, >>> however, there is also a fibre channel card in the controller so >>> that robotic commands may be sent via scsi over fc by the hosts. >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Leica Users Group. >> See http://leica-users.org/mailman/listinfo/lug for more information > > _______________________________________________ > Leica Users Group. > See http://leica-users.org/mailman/listinfo/lug for more information >