Our buyer is looking for options. Currently he is getting from sun a
scsi card and a 20/40 gb tape drive for backing up systems. He said the
tape drive is $1500.00 or so and wants to find a cheaper alternative.

What are other people doing? Also, some systems might be getting an 80
GB hard drive instead of the 40.


thanks,
wayne

Wayne Rasmussen <XvirtualDoNotSpamMe@gomonarch.com> writes:
>Our buyer is looking for options. Currently he is getting from sun a
>scsi card and a 20/40 gb tape drive for backing up systems. He said the
>tape drive is $1500.00 or so and wants to find a cheaper alternative.

Well, you could get cheaper SCSI tape drives. Sounds like a 4mm DAT,
which should be available in lots of different places.

http://www.cdw.com/shop/search/Resul...=all&x=0 &y=0

SCSI is probably going to be your best interface option in most
cases. Depending on what you are using for backup software, you could
go with pretty much any SCSI external tape solution you want. This
won't get you down into the areas of the IDE Travan tape drives, but
is better than $1500.

>What are other people doing? Also, some systems might be getting an 80
>GB hard drive instead of the 40.


How about backing it up over the network connection with an enterprise
tape backup solution? Get one big tape library, and a machine that
sucks it all down and stores it out to tape in a library? Software
gets a little expensive (well, there is an opensource one, Amanda) on
this solution, but it sure is nice in the end.

--
Doug McIntyre merlyn@visi.com
Network Engineer/Jack of All Trades
Vector Internet Services, Inc.

Wayne Rasmussen <XvirtualDoNotSpamMe@gomonarch.com> wrote in message news:<411263BB.A7B64637@gomonarch.com>...
> Our buyer is looking for options. Currently he is getting from sun a
> scsi card and a 20/40 gb tape drive for backing up systems. He said the
> tape drive is $1500.00 or so and wants to find a cheaper alternative.
>
> What are other people doing? Also, some systems might be getting an 80
> GB hard drive instead of the 40.
>
>
> thanks,
> wayne


You'll need the X5040A SCSI Controller for the Sunblade 1x0 , I had
one
in my old sunblade100. I think this cost approx $250.

Then you can attach whichever 68pin single ended UltraSCSI DAT device
that fits the
amount of storage to be backed up. Anything smaller than a DAT4 (
approx 28 GB compressed capacity ) is a bad idea.
The new DAT72 drives can probably store about 50 GB in compressed mode
on a
single tape.

When I had modified my Sunblade 100 it had 2 * 120 GB disks, to buy a
backup device for that capacity was more expensive than the machine it
self.
So I didn't

One reason for a commercial customer to buy the tape drive from SUN is
that the Maintenance agreement for the Workstation will cover the tape
unit.

If you buy the tape unit "on the street" It will have no maintenance
cover !
Unless you arrange it separatley.

//Lars

Doug McIntyre wrote:

> Wayne Rasmussen <XvirtualDoNotSpamMe@gomonarch.com> writes:
> >Our buyer is looking for options. Currently he is getting from sun a
> >scsi card and a 20/40 gb tape drive for backing up systems. He said the
> >tape drive is $1500.00 or so and wants to find a cheaper alternative.
>
> Well, you could get cheaper SCSI tape drives. Sounds like a 4mm DAT,
> which should be available in lots of different places.
>
> http://www.cdw.com/shop/search/Resul...=all&x=0 &y=0
>
> SCSI is probably going to be your best interface option in most
> cases. Depending on what you are using for backup software, you could
> go with pretty much any SCSI external tape solution you want. This
> won't get you down into the areas of the IDE Travan tape drives, but
> is better than $1500.
>
> >What are other people doing? Also, some systems might be getting an 80
> >GB hard drive instead of the 40.
>
> How about backing it up over the network connection with an enterprise
> tape backup solution? Get one big tape library, and a machine that
> sucks it all down and stores it out to tape in a library? Software
> gets a little expensive (well, there is an opensource one, Amanda) on
> this solution, but it sure is nice in the end.

A network storage might be possible in some environments that we have. But there might
be some legal/proceedural issues involved with that. The particular customer in question
has a 10year old machine running 4.1.4 on it. Now he wants to upgrade, but the new
system will still be standalone.

Amanda is an option to look at in the future. Just need more time...

Lars Tunkrans wrote:

> Wayne Rasmussen <XvirtualDoNotSpamMe@gomonarch.com> wrote in message news:<411263BB.A7B64637@gomonarch.com>...
> > Our buyer is looking for options. Currently he is getting from sun a
> > scsi card and a 20/40 gb tape drive for backing up systems. He said the
> > tape drive is $1500.00 or so and wants to find a cheaper alternative.
> >
> > What are other people doing? Also, some systems might be getting an 80
> > GB hard drive instead of the 40.
> >
> >
> > thanks,
> > wayne
>
> You'll need the X5040A SCSI Controller for the Sunblade 1x0 , I had
> one
> in my old sunblade100. I think this cost approx $250.
>
> Then you can attach whichever 68pin single ended UltraSCSI DAT device
> that fits the
> amount of storage to be backed up. Anything smaller than a DAT4 (
> approx 28 GB compressed capacity ) is a bad idea.
> The new DAT72 drives can probably store about 50 GB in compressed mode
> on a
> single tape.

But what would be the magic numbers to put in the st.conf file?