tape

[bxr556]

hi ,all:

I am using sun e4500 right now, but we don't have tape
drive for it, we are going to buy one, since i don't
familar with that, can somebody give me some suggestion?

i heard something about tape library or some thing like that.
the purpose is support our daily backup for oracle and other
staff.

any suggestion is welcome.

Thanks.

[marist89]

It all depends on how much you want to spend, how much you have to backup, how long is your backup window, and how much data you want to keep in your library at one time.

There are many, many options out there for tape devices. You could get a single tape drive that attaches directly to your Sun. With this, all your data will have to fit on one tape and you should change tapes every day. This is by far the cheapest method. You will probably want to go with a high capacity tape technology such as DLT or AIT.

Jukeboxes come in many different sizes. You can get libraries with 10 drives that hold 400 tapes, or you can get a single drive that holds 3 or 4 tapes. It all depends on how much you want to backup and how much you want to retain. Here again, I would go with either DLT or AIT technology.

Either way, you want to get backup software that will make your life easier. The two main contenders (on Sun, IMHO) are Legato Networker and Veritas Netbackup. I am partial to Netbackup because of the way it integrates with Oracle, but they both do a good job. The great thing these software packages is that most can be used for multi-platform backups (you can backup your NT boxes, Netware boxes, as well as your Sun boxes).

If you have the $$$, I like to implement Veritas Netbackup with a library that will backup the whole enterprise. That way, your tape jockies have only one interface to know how to use the one piece of sofware.