We have a fairly new network of 40 Apollos running 9.7 (SR10 "Real Soon
Now" 
. The topic of system backups has become an issue for us.
According some rough figuring, we have a worst case of 5 Gb of user space
to back up, and are presently using about 2 Gb. Obviously mag tapes
aren’t a nice way to go (20 tapes!?), so what is available?
I have heard about Workstation Solutions’ exaTape (SCSI 8mm video for
$6950), but I am not familiar with anything else. We are open to any
cost effective solution (video tape, optical disk, …). Does anyone
have any suggestions, recommendations, or words from the wise?
thanks,
dj
———————————————————————–
David J Wells w213/825-6850 d…@cs.ucla.edu
Danford Corp. also sells the Exabyte 8mm tape drive in a package for
the Apollo DN3000/4000 series. There are various VCR recorders which
have Pertec compatible interfaces (ie. 9-track tape drive interface),
but they are not sold as a complete package — you have to go out an
find a tape driver interface which is compatible with the Apollo. We
use a Ciprico interface for our Kennedy 9400 magtape, and it seems to
work just fine. Danford sells a 9-track tape drive interface for the
AT-bus machines. Digi-Data Corp. makes one of these VCR type recorders
(they call it a "Gigastore" or something like that). I think Honeywell
makes another.
– David Krowitz
krow…@richter.mit.edu (18.83.0.109)
krowitz%rich…@eddie.mit.edu
krowitz%rich…@athena.mit.edu
krowitz%richter.mit….@mitvma.bitnet
(in order of decreasing preference)
MEGATAPE corporation (in Duarte, CA) sells a backup subsystem that
runs off of a Ciprico card. The thing costs about $9000, and the media
cost is…get this…$10 a cartridge and you can buy the media at a
Music Plus or Wherehouse. The media is the "super 8" form of video
cartridge, and each cartridge contains 2.3 gigabytes of storage.
I run a 15 (12 Nodes and 3 DSP90 servers) node network here at JPL,
have been using their older system ($12,500 for the system and
630MB per $125 cartridge) and have had no problems using it except
for the fact that RBAK/WBAK times out looking for a logical backup
file that is too far into the media. But our backups aren’t accessed
that often, and I always run through the thing sequentially anyway.
Their phone number is (818)357-9921. Any more inquries, please E-mail
me at one of the address below.
——===<<<Dave Hayes>>>===——
dave%jplo…@jpl-mil.jpl.nasa.gov
{cit-vax,ames}!elroy!jplopto!dave
In article <15…@shemp.CS.UCLA.EDU>, d…@COGNET.UCLA.EDU writes:
> We have a fairly new network of 40 Apollos running 9.7 (SR10 "Real Soon
. The topic of system backups has become an issue for us.
> Now"
> According some rough figuring, we have a worst case of 5 Gb of user space
> to back up, and are presently using about 2 Gb. Obviously mag tapes
> aren’t a nice way to go (20 tapes!?), so what is available?
> thanks,
> dj
Try Megatape Corporation P.O. Box 317 Duarte Ca. 91010-0317
(818) 357-9921
We have had four of their MT750 tape drives here for a while
and they are very reliable. Repairs are via CDC field service
operations or return to factory. MT750 sell for around $12,000 each.
Stores around 630 MB Formatted on a cartridge rated at 750MB unformatted.
Good error recovery in drive, I/O caches, all the nice bells and whistles.
Only problem with the MT500, MT750 are transfer rates are 250 KB sustained.
Megatape also now has two new drives, a 1 GB per tape drive and
a 8MM Exabyte type as well, so they have a good selection.
Supports most available Popular tape interfaces as well. Ours are
running on Pyramids.
with the exception of the 8MM drive. all use a book size cartridge.
The cartridge costs about $100.00 each, after you use it 100 times
return it to factory for refurbishment, refurb costs under $50.00…
They also have a one year warranty on the cartridge.
Latest Models:
MT 750 630 MB on a 750 MB cartridge
Drive transfer rate 250 KB/sec.
depending on system controller, interface rate
to 4 MB/s (system to Megatape cache memory)
120 IPS
GT-88 8 mm cartridge 2 GB capacity, 1 MB Cache Pertec Interface
150 IPS, 245 KB per second transfer rate
MT 1500 Book cartridge as per MT750, 764 KB/sec transfer rate
1.2 GB formatted capacity 512 KB cache
Pertec or SCSI interfaces
Get the marketing hype for further details.
Oh, of all the companies I have dealt with over the phone, they HAVE
the BEST customer support. Whatever you need, you get it. They really
stand behind their stuff.
reliability: Most problems we have had were with bad or out of alignment
switches in the load mechanism, quick fixes, one drive had a bad controller
board that took a while to track down. (we use CDC service here, and they
are still on a learning curve with the drive…. However Megatape
was very helpful with tracking down the problem. Our CDC guys
spend HOURS on the phone talking to them and they don’t gripe once….)
One of our drives came in from the factory via air freight and van delivery
without the top foam padding in place (oops a factory goof) So this
drive was bounced around quite a bit. Megatape offered to swap it, but
as it looked okay, we installed it with the understanding that if it
was broken, we would get a new one with no trouble. The drive has worked
flawlessly from day one and that was over a year ago. (we got the
some of the first MT750′s off the line. I understand that AT & T and
various Bell companies in the NJ area also have these drives.
The cartridges can not be read by any other NON-MEGATAPE drives
so that’s a downside. But until 8 MM came along, no one that I know
of made anything with the kind of density that these drives have had
right along.
Ken Goodwin
NJ State Medical Underwriters, Inc.
In article <15…@shemp.CS.UCLA.EDU>, d…@COGNET.UCLA.EDU writes:
> We have a fairly new network of 40 Apollos running 9.7 (SR10 "Real Soon
. The topic of system backups has become an issue for us.
> Now"
> According some rough figuring, we have a worst case of 5 Gb of user space
> to back up, and are presently using about 2 Gb. Obviously mag tapes
> aren’t a nice way to go (20 tapes!?), so what is available?
> I have heard about Workstation Solutions’ exaTape (SCSI 8mm video for
> $6950), but I am not familiar with anything else. We are open to any
> cost effective solution (video tape, optical disk, …). Does anyone
> have any suggestions, recommendations, or words from the wise?
Well, we are in a similar situation, and about a year and a half ago, my
predecessor bought a megatape mt-750 (750 meg) streaming tape drive. Let me
say that as a student who had to do the backups, this drive was a godsend
compared to our suns that used 60 meg cartridges. Megatape now has an 8mm
tape drive (alas we don’t have this one). As for the ExaTape, we have four
of them for our Sun fileservers and the speed is incredible! They took a 12 hour
backup and reduced it to 1.5 hours, and from MegaTapes flyers on their 8mm the
backup rate is about 2.3Gig in 4 hours. I have 0 experience with optical disks,
but aren’t they write once/read many? that can get expensive. I would
recommend the 8mm drives (tapes are cheap $9 around MN and the speed is great)
> thanks,
> dj
your welcome
Darryl Bergstrom
Honeywell Corporate Systems Development Division, Golden Valley, MN
UUCP: {uunet || rutgers!umn-cs}!hi-csc!bergstr
ARPA: berg…@hi-csc.honeywell.com -=OR=- dar…@ux.acss.umn.edu
–
-Darryl Bergstrom
-Honeywell Corporate Systems Development Division, Golden Valley, Mn
-UUCP: {uunet || rutgers!umn-cs}!hi-csc!bergstr
-ARPA: berg…@hi-csc.honeywell.com -=OR=- dar…@ux.acss.umn.edu
>Date: 16 Aug 88 22:33:23 GMT
>From: d…@CS.UCLA.EDU
>Subject: Large scale backups
>We have a fairly new network of 40 Apollos running 9.7 (SR10 "Real Soon
. The topic of system backups has become an issue for us.
>Now"
>According some rough figuring, we have a worst case of 5 Gb of user space
>to back up, and are presently using about 2 Gb. Obviously mag tapes
>aren’t a nice way to go (20 tapes!?), so what is available?
>I have heard about Workstation Solutions’ exaTape (SCSI 8mm video for
>$6950), but I am not familiar with anything else. We are open to any
>cost effective solution (video tape, optical disk, …). Does anyone
>have any suggestions, recommendations, or words from the wise?
Nothing new to add really, but an independent recommendation is always
valuable. We bought Workstation Solutions’ ExaTape (SCSI 8mm video) system
earlier this summer. It works great. We didn’t get their software that
supports distributed backups, but I am trying to get some other University
of Pennsylvania Apollo sites to share the cost.
The ExaTape works very well with the special "standard" software that
Workstation Solutions provides. I typically backup 500 MB on six nodes
in just under 4 hours. (Some of the nodes were running compute-bound
tasks while their disks were being backed up.)
What else can I say?
-Chris
Christopher E. Shull
Decision Sciences Department
The Wharton School sh…@wharton.upenn.edu
University of Pennsylvania sh…@scrolls.wharton.upenn.edu
Philadelphia, PA 19104-6366 215/898-5930
—————————————————————————
"Damn the torpedoes! Full speed ahead!" Admiral Farragut, USN, 1801-1870
—————————————————————————
Thanks for the information. It looks like ExaTape is the most cost
effective backup system (for us). If I didn’t want to use an DN4000 for
the backup station, then I might go with MegaTape – they have a multibus
ExaByte drive for a DSP90. Including maintenance, the two are fairly
close in cost.
| What else can I say?
You told me the information that I wanted, so why say more? :-)
dj
David J Wells
d…@cs.ucla.edu
w213/206-3960