LTO3 vs DLT-S4? (Magnum 224 vs a SuperLoader3)?

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markm75

I've heard recently some stating to stay away from DLT, that it is too
slow and LTO is much better..

In pure specs DLT is 60 MB/sec and LTO3 at 80 MB/sec, give SATAII
drive read speeds I cant see how this could be true. Of course.. the
person stating this was an Exabyte rep wanting me to buy a magnum 224
drive over a DLT-s4 unit..

Anyone have any thoughts..

I'm favoring the Superloader3 from Quantum (DLT-S4).
 
markm75 said:
I've heard recently some stating to stay away from DLT, that it is too
slow and LTO is much better..

In pure specs DLT is 60 MB/sec and LTO3 at 80 MB/sec, give SATAII
drive read speeds I cant see how this could be true. Of course.. the
person stating this was an Exabyte rep wanting me to buy a magnum 224
drive over a DLT-s4 unit..

Anyone have any thoughts..

I'm favoring the Superloader3 from Quantum (DLT-S4).
Click to expand...

Hi, We have the Quantum Superloader LTO3 and it is super quick. The only
reason I saw to use DLT is to have backwards compatibility with DLT, which
we did not need.

We use Arcserve Brightstor v11.5 SP2 on a Windows 2003 server on a box which
is a standard HP workstation with three 750GB drives and one 80GB boot
drive. We put the three 750's together as one drive with windows disk
manager and we backup using Brightstor's multiple stream system so it backs
up many servers at once. Once it's all written to disk, the Brightstor
software writes the disk data to tape. Because the data is written to tape
from disk in block level it is extremely fast (the tape does not have to
stop and backup, etc). We send the tape offsite daily and any restores
required are done from the disk backup (if the restore point is only a
couple days old). Fantastic system. But I must admit the Brightstor software
is not for the faint of heart, but we've been using it for nearly 10 years
so we are used to it's quirks.

Good luck!
 
Hi, We have the Quantum Superloader LTO3 and it is super quick. The only
reason I saw to use DLT is to have backwards compatibility with DLT, which
we did not need.

We use Arcserve Brightstor v11.5 SP2 on a Windows 2003 server on a box which
is a standard HP workstation with three 750GB drives and one 80GB boot
drive. We put the three 750's together as one drive with windows disk
manager and we backup using Brightstor's multiple stream system so it backs
up many servers at once. Once it's all written to disk, the Brightstor
software writes the disk data to tape. Because the data is written to tape
from disk in block level it is extremely fast (the tape does not have to
stop and backup, etc). We send the tape offsite daily and any restores
required are done from the disk backup (if the restore point is only a
couple days old). Fantastic system. But I must admit the Brightstor software
is not for the faint of heart, but we've been using it for nearly 10 years
so we are used to it's quirks.

Good luck!
Click to expand...

Wow.. thanks for the great responses..

Sounds like a pretty sweet setup..

Still curious though.. your drives.. are they SATA II or SCSI etc?

Our "backup server" has SATAII's (around 140 MB/s avg reads).

I've struggled for awhile with Symantec 11D on 2003 (x64).. trying to
do the backup of 4 other servers via the gigabit lan.. Symantec is
horribly slow, many others have stated the same (say 20 hours or more
for 400gb even).

I then went to Acronis and sent the job from the source server to the
backup one.. it worked out much better.. but I'd prefer an all in one
solution..

Ill have to check out the software you mentioned. I'm also going to
test microsofts DPM management too.

I was hoping as you seem to indicate with your software, to send the
harddisk backup files directly to tape (not a backup inside a backup,
so if we ever need to restore from tape, we can do so directly)...

I dont believe there is a way to do this with Symantec BackupExec (?),
but it sounds like the software you are using lets you do this right?

Again thanks for the info/tips and all..

Our SuperLoader3 (dlt) just arrived, now I have to find the V-Rails
they mention (awaiting a price from CDW).

Cheers
 
markm75 said:
Wow.. thanks for the great responses..

Sounds like a pretty sweet setup..

Still curious though.. your drives.. are they SATA II or SCSI etc?

Our "backup server" has SATAII's (around 140 MB/s avg reads).

I've struggled for awhile with Symantec 11D on 2003 (x64).. trying to
do the backup of 4 other servers via the gigabit lan.. Symantec is
horribly slow, many others have stated the same (say 20 hours or more
for 400gb even).

I then went to Acronis and sent the job from the source server to the
backup one.. it worked out much better.. but I'd prefer an all in one
solution..

Ill have to check out the software you mentioned. I'm also going to
test microsofts DPM management too.

I was hoping as you seem to indicate with your software, to send the
harddisk backup files directly to tape (not a backup inside a backup,
so if we ever need to restore from tape, we can do so directly)...

I dont believe there is a way to do this with Symantec BackupExec (?),
but it sounds like the software you are using lets you do this right?

Again thanks for the info/tips and all..

Our SuperLoader3 (dlt) just arrived, now I have to find the V-Rails
they mention (awaiting a price from CDW).

Cheers
Click to expand...


Hi,

As best I can tell from our CDW purchase history the Brightstor backup PC
(server) is an HP DX2200 tower, and we added three Seagate Barracuda 7200.10
HD 750GB SATA II drives.

The Brightstor software writes the disk-to-disk data to the tape in the
normal format, that is, as if it was written directly to tape so you can, as
you said, restore directly from tape.

The Brightstor log reports backup throughput of our main file server is
472MB/Min for 200GB. It might be faster if we were not backing up multiple
servers at the same time. The source server example is a Compaq DL380 G3
with 10k SCSI drives on RAID 5 with "teamed" gigabit NICs. The source and
target are connected by an unmanaged Netgear Gigabit switch.

The only speed issue we have with Brightstor is the Exchange 2003 "bricks
level" backup could be faster, but that is a limitaiton really of the speed
of your exchange server as the bricks level backup agent option gets every
item (msg) individually so you can restore individual email objects.

Good luck with your new loader!

Tell your CDW rep you want a trial Brightstor disk from CA. Unlike the
Symantec solution the Brightstor trial has no restrictions, IIRC.
 
Hi,

As best I can tell from our CDW purchase history the Brightstor backup PC
(server) is an HP DX2200 tower, and we added three Seagate Barracuda 7200.10
HD 750GB SATA II drives.

The Brightstor software writes the disk-to-disk data to the tape in the
normal format, that is, as if it was written directly to tape so you can, as
you said, restore directly from tape.

The Brightstor log reports backup throughput of our main file server is
472MB/Min for 200GB. It might be faster if we were not backing up multiple
servers at the same time. The source server example is a Compaq DL380 G3
with 10k SCSI drives on RAID 5 with "teamed" gigabit NICs. The source and
target are connected by an unmanaged Netgear Gigabit switch.

The only speed issue we have with Brightstor is the Exchange 2003 "bricks
level" backup could be faster, but that is a limitaiton really of the speed
of your exchange server as the bricks level backup agent option gets every
item (msg) individually so you can restore individual email objects.

Good luck with your new loader!

Tell your CDW rep you want a trial Brightstor disk from CA. Unlike the
Symantec solution the Brightstor trial has no restrictions, IIRC.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -
Click to expand...

So the 472 MB/min is your server, across network, to backup
workstation speed? Thats only about 8 MB/sec.. and it actually sounds
very similar to the numbers I was getting with Symantec for that part.

How fast is the disk to tape going (anywhere near 80 MB/sec as they
specs say for LTO3?)
 
markm75 said:
Wow.. thanks for the great responses..

Sounds like a pretty sweet setup..

Still curious though.. your drives.. are they SATA II or SCSI etc?
Click to expand...

750GB SCSI drives of course, can't you tell?
Our "backup server" has SATAII's (around 140 MB/s avg reads).

I've struggled for awhile with Symantec 11D on 2003 (x64).. trying to
do the backup of 4 other servers via the gigabit lan.. Symantec is
horribly slow, many others have stated the same (say 20 hours or more
for 400gb even).

I then went to Acronis and sent the job from the source server to the
backup one.. it worked out much better.. but I'd prefer an all in one
solution..

Ill have to check out the software you mentioned. I'm also going to
test microsofts DPM management too.

I was hoping as you seem to indicate with your software, to send the
harddisk backup files directly to tape (not a backup inside a backup,
so if we ever need to restore from tape, we can do so directly)...

I dont believe there is a way to do this with Symantec BackupExec (?),
but it sounds like the software you are using lets you do this right?

Again thanks for the info/tips and all..
Click to expand...
Our SuperLoader3 (dlt) just arrived,
Click to expand...

Right, so it was already on order when you asked the question, hence a troll question.
 
Right, so it was already on order when you asked the question, hence a troll question.
Click to expand...

No it wasnt on order when I originally asked the question, besides why
do you care? There is nothing wrong with asking the question, maybe
we are evaluating the product before switching to another..

Can a person not ask a question without interjections from "people"
such as yourself, you've got nothing better to do than harass people?

If you have nothing useful to contribute then dont respond.
 
So the 472 MB/min is your server, across network, to backup
workstation speed? Thats only about 8 MB/sec.. and it actually sounds
very similar to the numbers I was getting with Symantec for that part.

How fast is the disk to tape going (anywhere near 80 MB/sec as they
specs say for LTO3?)- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -
Click to expand...

Forgot to ask:

Curious too if you purchased a rail kit with your unit and if so, if
its ever come in handy. I would imagine that if the unit needs
warranty work, the top cover would need to come off, so without rails
this could be tricky depending on rack configuration. Leading to my
other question... Quantum even stated that sometimes the heads can
fail in 6 months, 1 year etc.. have you ever run into any issues with
the hardware.. or maybe you haven't had it that long.

Cheers
 
markm75 said:
So the 472 MB/min is your server, across network, to backup
workstation speed? Thats only about 8 MB/sec.. and it actually sounds
very similar to the numbers I was getting with Symantec for that part.
Click to expand...

Yep, that's it.
How fast is the disk to tape going (anywhere near 80 MB/sec as they
specs say for LTO3?)
Click to expand...

My report shows our fastest disk to tape transfer was 4,021.60 MB/min and
our average for 317,709.68 MB was 2,823.22 MB/min. Brightstor creates a
disk "session" for each of the seven servers it backs up and most were in
the 3,200 MB/min range but for some reason a couple of them were only 2,000
MN/min so it lowered the average.
 
markm75 said:
Forgot to ask:

Curious too if you purchased a rail kit with your unit and if so, if
its ever come in handy. I would imagine that if the unit needs
warranty work, the top cover would need to come off, so without rails
this could be tricky depending on rack configuration. Leading to my
other question... Quantum even stated that sometimes the heads can
fail in 6 months, 1 year etc.. have you ever run into any issues with
the hardware.. or maybe you haven't had it that long.
Click to expand...

Sorry, I have nothing to add here as currently the Quantum is not loaded in
a rack. We did buy the rails but this client has not installed a rack yet.
 
The Brightstor log reports backup throughput of our main file server is
472MB/Min for 200GB. It might be faster if we were not backing up multiple
servers at the same time. The source server example is a Compaq DL380 G3
with 10k SCSI drives on RAID 5 with "teamed" gigabit NICs. The source and
target are connected by an unmanaged Netgear Gigabit switch.
Click to expand...

Thanks again for the responses..

One other question, are the source servers on gigabit ethernet as
well.. ie: I think you are indicating they are on a gigabit switch,
but do they have gigabit nics on each one as well?
 
markm75 said:
Thanks again for the responses..

One other question, are the source servers on gigabit ethernet as
well.. ie: I think you are indicating they are on a gigabit switch,
but do they have gigabit nics on each one as well?
Click to expand...

Yes, all GB NIC's on the netgear unmanaged switch. Many of the servers
including the one for which I quoted performance are Compaq DL380 with two
NIC's and they are "teamed" to 2GB, but not sure it's really doing anything.
I guess I never really did the math but since we went to multi streams I'm
just so happy our backup window has been cut from 12 hours to only 7.

I may be out of the group for a while so good luck!
 
markm75 said:
Thanks again for the responses..

One other question, are the source servers on gigabit ethernet as
well.. ie: I think you are indicating they are on a gigabit switch,
but do they have gigabit nics on each one as well?
Click to expand...

This is a perfect example of what I'm talking about in a previous post. Be
very careful of taking any of what Bob says as being factual or remotely
correct. Bob has demonstrated his inexperience and lack of any real world
experience when he foolishly claimed that RAID cards don't need drives.

The correct answer here is that tape and tape libraries are the main
bottleneck in the equation. Even using antiquated servers such as the DL380
on Fibre networks it becomes evident that even cutting edge tape solutions
are mind numbingly slow relatively speaking. Obviously your best solution
is to optimize your tape solution for maximum throughput and forget about it
should you desire to stay with tape. The only real cost effective and
bulletproof solution for maximum performance and reliability would be to use
multiple backup servers. Even the very best tape solutions aren't 100%
reliable and the worst time to find this out is when you are in the middle
of disaster recovery.







Rita
 
markm75 said:
Can a person not ask a question without interjections from "people"
such as yourself, you've got nothing better to do than harass people?
Click to expand...

You are now starting meet some our resident trolls and idiots in this group
that don't have any real world experience and simply parrot what they find
on the net. Be cautious of what you can consider fact.






Rita
 
This is a perfect example of what I'm talking about in a previous post.
Click to expand...

Just Bob is a resident troll. Right you are, Rita girl.
Be very careful of taking any of what Bob says as being factual or remotely
correct. Bob has demonstrated his inexperience and lack of any real world
experience when he foolishly claimed that RAID cards don't need drives.
Click to expand...

What part of "troll question" did you not understand exactly, Rita dear.
MarkM is having a ball. And now you have become the icing on his cake.
The correct answer here is ...
Click to expand...

rest of troll snipped.
 
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