Scenario
Company: Hood AustraliaThis company wants to back up a variety of servers to a single highcapacity tape drive.
Approximate budget: $10,000 (drive cost)
Requires: One backup drive with at least 100GB raw capacity per tape. Drive must be external and connect using SCSI.
Concerns: Speed of backup is the primary concern, while cost of backup tapes is also an issue.
Best Solution: The Lynx LTO 460 takes out the Editors' Choice Award. It was the fastest of all the drives tested and it featured the highest cartridge capacities. Even though its initial purchase price is high, the cost per gigabyte is very low.
The Quantum SDLT-320 also deserves a worthy mention. It's fast and its initial price is relatively low. It doesn't use a new tape format like the Lynx LTO 460 and it features downward compatibility with tapes using DLT technology.
What to look for when buying a tape backup unit:
- Speed: The amount of data you have to backup and the amount of time you have available to complete a backup determines the level of performance you need.
- Capacity: The maximum amount of data that can be written to a single tape data cartridge. Check the total native and compressed capacity.
- Price: Look at the cost per gigabyte in terms of cost of cartridge/native capacity. Cost per gigabyte can vary quite dramatically.
- Topology: The connection between the tape drive and the data source should also be considered. The performance of a tape drive should match the data throughput rate for the LAN.
- Automation: There are two types of automated backup devices that exist: the autoloader and a library. The main difference is that the autoloader has a single tape drive, but a library has multiple drives.
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