A word of advice on the Spectra Logic Gator. We have had one for about two months now and it is not yet a mature product. (but it is making progress) In that time I have had to upgrade S/W in the unit at least four times. One upgrade (done at the recommendation of Spectra Logic) turned out to not be compatible with the EC level of my H/W requiring a couple of RMAs. Today it is still possible to confuse the unit if care is not taken. (what else can you expect from a product running Windoes CE?)
Having said the above. I like the idea behind the gator and believe that in time Spectra Logic will get the kinks worked out. The ability to logically partition the unit as well as the future possibility of backing a netapp over FC-AL makes it very appealing. But you might want to give the unit a little time to mature first.
In my experience the fastest way to back up a filler today is direct attach SCSI. FC-AL is not supported till OnTap 6.x which is still only early access. (I will not run early access code on production fillers) Gig ethernet may look appealing but I cannot see how placing an ethernet layer between the NetApp and the tape drive is going to speed anything up. There are two fundamental bottlenecks for backups, the speed of the tape drive and the load on the filler. Adding more stuff in the middle cannot speed things up.
While we are on the subject, I have an upgrade the "ndmputil" package that supports large tape libraries and includes a tool to retrieve drive & tape stats from AIT tape drives. I hope to get the upgrade to NetApp for posting on NOW as soon as I get the documentation updated.
Graydon Dodson grdodson@lexmark.com Lexmark International Inc.
------------- Begin Forwarded Message -------------
From: Jeff Bryer bryer%sfu.ca@interlock.lexmark.com Subject: Re: Backup solution. To: foo%eek.org@interlock.lexmark.com (foo) Date: Mon, 16 Oct 2000 14:28:27 -0700 (PDT) Cc: toasters%mathworks.com@interlock.lexmark.com
The questions are:
1.) Which tape library to buy (leaning towards SpectraLogic Bullfrog with 4
drives/40 tapes).
We were looking at the Gator 12000 from SpectraLogic ourselves. Then decided on the 64000 for it's ability to scale up. We haven't got it hooked up yet, so I can't give you a performance report just yet.
2.) To connect the library to the network via gig-e or to the netapp's via
FCAL.
We're going with direct attach SCSI to a pair of F740s and a pair of SUN E450s. May direct attach to a 3rd F740 (if we buy a third). In a year or so, I may want to switch over to a SAN environment (swap out our S-QIPS with F-QIPS in the Gator), but I'm not comfortable enough with technology currently to consider that for the immediate future.
3.) Which software to buy and what to make it do (eh NDMP blah).
We're evaluating Time Navigator (Quadratec), Backup Express (SyncSort), and Quick Restore (Workstation Solutions). Legato's NDMP support currently is not worth considering, and Veritas hasn't been forthcoming in working with us.
We're looking to handle 1 - 1 1/2TBs in the short term, and scale up if we start backing up servers across campus.