Could someone explain tape backups to me? I keep reading that

>>61353461
They have a have massive storage capacity and are small. They are extremely slow to build from, but understand that a company doing tape backups they for sure have a SAS that they use primarily for backups. Tapes are usually sent off to Iron Mountain or locked in a safe onsite. Building a backup from tapes is like the nuclear option if you need to truly recover from a disaster.

Also big companies don't want to lose any data, and can't possible afford to keep all their data running on a sas, so having tape backups is a good "just in case" measure for accessing some transaction that happened like a decade ago.

>tfw you get asked for 90s payroll data and half the tapes don't load
KHAAAAAAAAAN!

>>61353461
Because you can do exactly the same with tape and it spool's... It's the whole spool thing that the younger generation just doesnt appreciate.

>>61354252
No, no, you shall not get away, from hell's heart, I stab at thee... For hate's sake, I spit my last breath at thee... To the last I shall grapple with thee!

What tape formats are used in these massive backup libraries and how much does each tape hold? Are we talking VHS sized tapes holding several TBs of data?

>>61355177
https://www.cdw.com/shop/products/Quantum-LTO-Ultrium-x-1-6-TB-storage-media/3894383.aspx?pfm=srh

more like small casettes

>>61353461
A tape drive may be expensive, but the tape itself is cheap as fuck.

>>61355822
Buy used older generation tapes for home use. Devices there can be gotten for several hundred dollars.
LTO shelf life is advertised as 10 years.

>>61356694
>LTO shelf life is advertised as 10 years.

Whoops meant 30 years.

>>61353461
An HDD's life is not dependent on whether or not it is plugged in.
It will last an average of 6 years in either case.

>>61353461
Tapes are a meme. They can loose all data if you drop them a few inches, and like Pixar found out, last nowhere near 10 years.

>>61354145
>running on a SAS
what did he mean by this

>>61357860
>An HDD's life is not dependent on whether or not it is plugged in.
>It will last an average of 6 years in either case.
Wait, what?
Oh god, please tell me this isn't true.

>>61353461
Tapes are passe'
They are slow, fragile, and expensive.
Hell, hard drives are about the same cost per GB, but don't require a $5000 tape drive which invariably goes bad.

aren't ancient hard disk drives basically the same as tapes?

Hdds will last a long time if you use them for intended purpose. or store them in antistatic bags somewhere they won't get dropped/kicked/wet/etc for long term offline storage.

>>61360062
Pretty much. The enterprise grade tape solutions are pretty damn cool though, I'll give them that.

>>61360062
>Hell, hard drives are about the same cost per GB
Where can I get a 6TB hard drive for $90?

>>61353461
tape is about $8 per terabyte as of 2015, if you are storing enterprise workloads with change logs for full reversion it is far cheaper.

at home, with less frequent changes or cycles between load/unload vs. direct use, tape probably isn't worth it.

>>61354145
They are usually verified every 90 days, cleetus.

>>61360678
>Where can I get a 6TB hard drive for $90
I said close.
Depending on drive you can spend $150-250 for 6TB
Since the LTO7 drives are about $5000, that means you'd have to buy 33-100 tapes in addition to the drive just to break even in $/TB.
That's an expenditure of about $8000-$15000
And those tape drives shit the bed after X number of uses.

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>1995+22
>not using old VHS tapes for your backups

>>61354145
>>61359035
>sas

The acronym you're looking for is SAN.

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>>61354145
Having been a primary backups admin for the last 5 years, I'm speaking from my own personal experience

>massive storage and are small
yes, for relatively cheap
>extremely slow to build from
incredibly slow, in the range of taking two weeks to restore 2tb
>they for sure have a SAN that they use primarily for backups
this is where IME you're dead wrong. The clients I've been working with either have backups stored to disk OR tape, never both.
Of course, this is because the large majority of customers are fucking retards that would rather not spend any more money on backups than the bare minimum and then complain when their RPO/RTO are shit.

>big companies don't want to lose any data
no, but it happens all the fucking time when they skimp on their backup solutions.

>>61363718
>incredibly slow, in the range of taking two weeks to restore 2tb

I can restore 2TB from my SAS LTO-6 in way less than 2 days, maybe one day. That's not even one full tape.

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>>61365304
>LTO-6
fair enough, the jews I'm working for are hellbent on sticking with the LTO-3 they've got, and have straight up told me no when I presented them a DAS+Win7 setup for local backups with automated replication to a second branch for DR purposes.

I mean, beyond that it's on them when I can't restore properly, right? I've done my due diligence in telling them their current solution is shit and providing quotes for improvement.

>>61353461
Drives are rated for 7-12 years depending on density. Higher densities last longer.
Tape 20-30 years depending on formulation and theres no electronics or motors to worry about.
Basically, disk is business continuity and tape is for archival.

>>61365512
I get up to 10000MB/min with LTO-6 without anything too fancy.
2TB could be done in 3-4 hours. I backed up about 1TB to LTO5 in 2 1/2 hours.
As weird as this sounds, tape was way faster than a competing disk based system that used de-dup and compression. Plus I like being able to transport it around easy for test restoring and lab vs streaming a couple TB over the internet from a cloud provider which can take days and cost a shitload too for the privilege.

>>61353461

Everyone is missing the point of Tape anyone that is storing data in this manner and volume is usually text or transaction data out of a SQL database

The compression of that kind of data is what tape excels at LTO-7 is advertised at 6tb uncompressed and 15TB compressed, that's where the savings come in

>>61366492
>The compression of that kind of data is what tape excels at LTO-7 is advertised at 6tb uncompressed and 15TB compressed, that's where the savings come in
you dense motherfucker
compression has nothing to do with tapes
you can compress data to a disk

>>61353461
Tapes are /retro/, they like it because it's hipster and cool.

>>61366540
It actually does, learn Information Theory.

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>>61366587
not that anon but you're retarded

>>61359673
>>An HDD's life is not dependent on whether or not it is plugged in.
Your mechanical hard drive is plugged in 10 years down the road.
It refuses to spin up because chemical component responsible for lubricating the spindle has broken down, dust got inside, it has oxidized, someone dropped it and the ceramic shattered/ metal plates deformed, the head is stuck, some of the onboard ROM got corrupted by random space particles, a tiny cap on the PCB blew, you plugged in the sata connector and it physically decoupled from the PCB surface, or the shingled magnetic surface oughtright bled and rot on a massive scale.

The tape is inserted and a few checksums were bad after 20 years in a dank basement, it decoupled one end of the tape against all design, or it had too many full passes over weak plastic made and has become unsound storage medium and needs to be replaced.

Tape is maximum K.I.S.S.

>>61366864
>Tape is maximum K.I.S.S.
Its not. You're retardedly comparing just a tape cartridge to a hard drive when you should be comparing the cartridge and drive. Furthermore you dont even know what hard drive platters are made out of.

>>61366917
Well, I've blown up and crushed quite a few to know that some are ceramic and others are metal.

The point is tape decouples your R/W device from the storage medium while providing decent density and non retarded storage conditions for the raw medium.
A hard drive would require a clean room to safely shift the spindle to a properly functional device.

>>61366972
>The point is tape decouples your R/W device from the storage medium

So it does absolutely nothing to make the drive more reliable. The tape drives can still die just as hard drives can.

>inb4 b-b-but i can replace a tape drive
you can transfer the platters, PCB or spindle on hard drives.

>b-b-but a clean room
no it doesn't. i've taken covers off disks which had problems with the spindles not being able to spin up, and manually spun it and was able to get the data off. you dont need a clean room, you just dont want it to be raining sand

>>61367030
You can just plug in a new tape drive without any fanciness. Tape is simpler and the cartridge more reliable.

>>61367152
>I dont know why VTLs exist

>>61367182
Tape is an archive medium. That's why.

>>61367030
>The tape drives can still die just as hard drives can
But you need to buy far fewer tape drives than hard drives.

When you're spending 100ks on tape, that fixed cost 5k tape drive is a rounding error, even if you need a hundred of them. The same amount of storage in HDDs would bankrupt a top 50 company, especially factoring failure rate of the medium.

Since you're retarded, let's be clear that tapes are for archiving massive amounts of data, not what your average small business would use.

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>>61367231
>I still dont know what a VTL is

>>61356731
Isn't that like in "precisely controlled environment" though?

>>61367261
>When you're spending 100ks on tape, that fixed cost 5k tape drive is a rounding error,
You're an absolute retard. a $5k tape drive would be a LTO6 2U autoloader. No one is going to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on tapes for a 2U autoloader.

>>61367286
yes

>>61367294
>yes
So how would that work in a home environment when not even in a fridge you get constant humidity/temperature?

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>>61367268
You're that faggot with a 1kW home router aren't you?

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>>61353461
Why not write to filmstock instead of tape? The data would be more full and evocative that way.

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>>61367316
It was a 150 watt ASA 5510 which has since been replaced with a pair of Cisco Firepower Threat Defense Virtual NGIPSes

>>61367302
Its not, and even a lot businesses will do retarded things like keep them on a shelf next to a hot aisle.

>>61367334
>Cisco Firepower Threat Defense Virtual NGIPSes
>>61367316
And i forgot to include something which wil trigger you. The Cisco FTDv setup I have requires 25GB RAM and 13 CPU cores.