Re: What options other than tape for server backup?

1. if you replace your tape drives, skip the LTO-4 and go to LTO-5. LTO-5 can still read the LTO-3 tapes but not write to them. You will have to purchase new LTO-5 tapes.

2. Is your LTO-3 drives SCSC or SAS?

If SCSI you will need to go to SAS for the LTO-4 or LTO-5 thus you can keep your LTO-3 on the system as SCSI. It that case you may want to jump to LTO-6 at 2.5TB per cartridge. You may also want to go Fibre attachment.

We use eVault to backup to disk then replicate to the cloud. Got out of the tape business.

Chris Bipes
Director of Information Services
CrossCheck, Inc.

-----Original Message-----
From: pctech-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:pctech-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Steve McKay
Sent: Friday, January 31, 2014 8:39 AM
To: pctech@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [PCTECH] What options other than tape for server backup?

What do you folks use to backup your servers? We're using BackupExec (I
think) to LTO-3 tape (IBM TS3310 library). The boss is unhappy with
this because we create 40-50 backup tapes per week so tape expenses
(tapes and storage of tapes) are high. He wants to do something more
"modern". We *could* backup to the cloud or local SAN but what do we do
for archive purposes?

What solutions are you aware of?

If we replaced the 2 LTO-3 drives with 2 LTO-4 drives, would that do
anything for us? The issue is not so much "speed" as it is "volume".

Any suggestions are welcomed.