Magnetic Tape Storage is making a comeback and could replace hard drives in Enterprise and business storage

[leadeater]

1 hour ago, willies leg said:

Not gonna happen. Tape is offline storage, and it's lifetime is questionable at best. At least you can scrub a disk pretty easily, when was the last time you scrubbed your tape vault to see what you could read and what you couldn't?

Pretty regularly if you bother to configure your backup software to do it and you can also set media refresh cycle so the data is re-written on to new media. But unless you're hitting 10 year mark the only media degradation you have to worry about is improper storage (humidity) rotting your tapes. No amount of verification reads and re-writes will help you there though.

 

Also tape isn't exactly offline storage, you can have every tape unmounted but available to mount always i.e. in the tape library. You don't have to take tapes out of a library, you can write two sets for every backup cycle and ship one set to offsite storage. You can also link your backup software to the company to generate media recall jobs for them to ship the tapes back so you can verify them or copy the backup set to new media then ship back.

[Guest]

7 hours ago, leadeater said:

Pretty regularly if you bother to configure your backup software to do it and you can also set media refresh cycle so the data is re-written on to new media. But unless you're hitting 10 year mark the only media degradation you have to worry about is improper storage (humidity) rotting your tapes. No amount of verification reads and re-writes will help you there though.

 

Also tape isn't exactly offline storage, you can have every tape unmounted but available to mount always i.e. in the tape library. You don't have to take tapes out of a library, you can write two sets for every backup cycle and ship one set to offsite storage. You can also link your backup software to the company to generate media recall jobs for them to ship the tapes back so you can verify them or copy the backup set to new media then ship back.

With Fujitsu Eternus CS what you can have is a single system which is split over two sites. This is the HDD based cache and controllers. It is effectively a cluster of servers all with their own tasks, but the cluster is split over two sites. So the HDD arrays are mirrored over the two sites. Attached to the back end of each site can be attached one or more tape robots/libraries. So there you have multiple backups split over two locations which can be many miles apart. The software automatically refreshes tapes, scratches tapes and monitors the whole setup. Encryption can be applied on many levels, including the tapes, the links between sites and the incoming data etc. Like you say, the tape library can span thousands of tapes and multiple tape drives often with pairs of drives connected to their own dedicated server on the Eternus CS for redundancy and increased data rate.

 

I am not sure many commenting on this thread realise the scales we are talking bout here so I can understand why people are missing the point somewhat.

[leadeater]

32 minutes ago, Phill104 said:

I am not sure many commenting on this thread realise the scales we are talking bout here so I can understand why people are missing the point somewhat.

Plus this and typical backup software and tape utilization are actually quite different things. Here VIFS will be managing the tapes not the backup software and I would imagine be treated like a disk target/NAS.

 

Eternus CS is also a bit different itself too, and the many others like it, for the backup software I use. For me I don't want the more expensive backup appliances that do their own deduplication and tape handling, I want distinct pools of storage resources of different types and control data placement at the backup software level. This means I can get global data deduplication and have the unique data stored where and how I like for as long as I like etc. This does mean I need to shift the cost to more expensive backup servers with arrays of SSDs to host the deduplication databases (mine have 4 NVMe SSDs each but overkill for my workload, good SATA would have been fine).

[Guest willies leg]

8 hours ago, leadeater said:

Pretty regularly if you bother to configure your backup software to do it and you can also set media refresh cycle so the data is re-written on to new media. But unless you're hitting 10 year mark the only media degradation you have to worry about is improper storage (humidity) rotting your tapes. No amount of verification reads and re-writes will help you there though.

 

Also tape isn't exactly offline storage, you can have every tape unmounted but available to mount always i.e. in the tape library. You don't have to take tapes out of a library, you can write two sets for every backup cycle and ship one set to offsite storage. You can also link your backup software to the company to generate media recall jobs for them to ship the tapes back so you can verify them or copy the backup set to new media then ship back.

 

Our 4 L700's had 12 drives and 700 tape slots. They were huge! I remember getting inside of it when we took the back expansion enclosure off so we could surplus it and get it out of the double doors of the server room. Like a boat, the happiest memories were (1) when we got them, and (2) when we got rid of them.

 

Our drives were always in use, even though they were fibre channel the thruput wasn't too good. I remember having to change out the cleaning tapes in the playground every few months because of all the use. We had stuck tapes, bad drives, arm alignment issues, bad tapes, really crappy (but good for the time) backup software. It was called NetBackup not "net restore" because good luck getting anything back! Never successfully did a full system restore. Even Veritas knew their software sucked. Sold it to Symantec, I think. It's probably dead now.

 

So funny, when we went to training in Boston, were in a class of around 20 or so. Went around the room, introducing ourselves and why we were there. So many like "Hi, I'm Jim, from company X. I'm here because we can't get this stuff working reliably!"

 

I'll tell you what, everybody uses thin snapshots and remote replication now. Tapes were fun but they ain't coming back. Why the F would anyone use a "backup system" when they can just snap and recover? I'll take "zfs scrub" over verifying the tape catalog and commanding the monstrosity to verify you can read the tapes (but never know if you can actually restore them)...every time.

 

Thanks for the trip down memory lane!

[leadeater]

17 minutes ago, willies leg said:

when we got rid of them

Yep, generally nobody wants to deal with tapes unless you have to or (rarely, at least now) is a good idea to have them.

 

17 minutes ago, willies leg said:

We had stuck tapes, bad drives, arm alignment issues, bad tapes

I don't want to say this... I've not had a single issue with our LTO-5 Quantums or LTO-7 MSL6480s. But now I expect a problem, great.

 

17 minutes ago, willies leg said:

I'll tell you what, everybody uses thin snapshots and remote replication now. Tapes were fun but they ain't coming back. Why the F would anyone use a "backup system" when they can just snap and recover? I'll take "zfs scrub" over verifying the tape catalog and commanding the monstrosity to verify you can read the tapes (but never know if you can actually restore them)...every time.

Because you do that and tapes and you use the tapes for final long term retention or archives. Direct to tape and disk staged weekly/monthly tape cycles died years ago and will never come back, tape themselves are still widely used but for long term final resting place only.

 

Edit:

Also snapshots are not backups, general imprecise rule. Something like Netapp SnapVaults are but Snaps and SnapMirrors are not backups.

[Guest]

20 minutes ago, willies leg said:

 

Our 4 L700's had 12 drives and 700 tape slots. They were huge! I remember getting inside of it when we took the back expansion enclosure off so we could surplus it and get it out of the double doors of the server room. Like a boat, the happiest memories were (1) when we got them, and (2) when we got rid of them.

 

Our drives were always in use, even though they were fibre channel the thruput wasn't too good. I remember having to change out the cleaning tapes in the playground every few months because of all the use. We had stuck tapes, bad drives, arm alignment issues, bad tapes, really crappy (but good for the time) backup software. It was called NetBackup not "net restore" because good luck getting anything back! Never successfully did a full system restore. Even Veritas knew their software sucked. Sold it to Symantec, I think. It's probably dead now.

 

So funny, when we went to training in Boston, were in a class of around 20 or so. Went around the room, introducing ourselves and why we were there. So many like "Hi, I'm Jim, from company X. I'm here because we can't get this stuff working reliably!"

 

I'll tell you what, everybody uses thin snapshots and remote replication now. Tapes were fun but they ain't coming back. Why the F would anyone use a "backup system" when they can just snap and recover? I'll take "zfs scrub" over verifying the tape catalog and commanding the monstrosity to verify you can read the tapes (but never know if you can actually restore them)...every time.

 

Thanks for the trip down memory lane!

I used to look after some L700 setups. Compared to a lot of other libraries there were not very reliable. I feel your pain when talking of those.

[leadeater]

8 minutes ago, Phill104 said:

I used to look after some L700 setups. Compared to a lot of other libraries there were not very reliable. I feel your pain when talking of those.

From my experience none of the older libraries were that reliable, manufacturing and design has just gotten better I guess. Zero touch used to be nothing but a dream but now I expect that, going over to where the libraries are is inconvenient so having to go over for an arm alignment issue would be highly annoying. Plus if we can make highly accurate 3D printers we can damn well reliably pick up a tape and put it in to a hole.

[Guest]

1 hour ago, leadeater said:

Plus this and typical backup software and tape utilization are actually quite different things. Here VIFS will be managing the tapes not the backup software and I would imagine be treated like a disk target/NAS.

 

Eternus CS is also a bit different itself too, and the many others like it, for the backup software I use. For me I don't want the more expensive backup appliances that do their own deduplication and tape handling, I want distinct pools of storage resources of different types and control data placement at the backup software level. This means I can get global data deduplication and have the unique data stored where and how I like for as long as I like etc. This does mean I need to shift the cost to more expensive backup servers with arrays of SSDs to host the deduplication databases (mine have 4 NVMe SSDs each but overkill for my workload, good SATA would have been fine).

Yes, Eternus CS is a virtual tape library and not a backup solution in itself. It allows many different bits of backup software as it just presents itself as a tape robot and can emulate almost all of the types of tape from C4 to LTO etc. You still use normal backup software such as robar, net backup, EMC networker etc. In most cases an installation is just swapping out the existing tape library, whatever it may be, and inserting Eternus CS. The software and backup servers remain the same as before. That is why I bought it into this thread, as it is an extension of a tape robot rather than a full replacement

[Guest]

1 minute ago, leadeater said:

From my experience none of the older libraries were that reliable, manufacturing and design has just gotten better I guess. Zero touch used to be nothing but a dream but now I expect that, going over to where the libraries are is inconvenient so having to go over for an arm alignment issue would be highly annoying. Plus if we can make highly accurate 3D printers we can damn well reliably pick up a tape and put it in to a hole.

One of the biggest problems with the L700 units was the pick arm, which dropped tapes often. It was a terrible design relying on two rubber pads to grip the tape. Even dust on those bits of rubber would cause the tape to drop. They also had a mix of tape drive types to deal with making things worse. 
 

I must say you are right, modern LTO drives are far more reliable. It has been years since I ha e seen a tape jammed in one.

[leadeater]

1 minute ago, Phill104 said:

It allows many different bits of backup software as it just presents itself as a tape robot and can emulate almost all of the types of tape from C4 to LTO etc

Doesn't it also support being presented as a NAS as well as a VTL? It would work fine with what I use, Commvault, it's just feature wise a bit redundant and the software level of Commvault would generally be more flexible and do a better job overall for data management and placement. But on the other hand Commvault is expensive so a box solution is also just as good of a solution.

 

It's just not something I would pick for us over a straight library. Our disk storage is Netapp based so I mostly drive SnapVaults with Commvault but for stuff not on Netapp that goes to Ceph object store now (used to go to a dedicated Netapp backup storage filer, $$$ and so not smart). Tape comes in when the data is ready to 'die'.

[Guest]

3 minutes ago, leadeater said:

Doesn't it also support being presented as a NAS as well as a VTL? It would work fine with what I use, Commvault, it's just feature wise a bit redundant and the software level of Commvault would generally be more flexible and do a better job overall for data management and placement. But on the other hand Commvault is expensive so a box solution is also just as good of a solution.

 

It's just not something I would pick for us over a straight library. Our disk storage is Netapp based so I mostly drive SnapVaults with Commvault but for stuff not on Netapp that goes to Ceph object store now (used to go to a dedicated Netapp backup storage filer, $$$ and so not smart). Tape comes in when the data is ready to 'die'.

I agree, it is a complex beast and not suited to all environments. It is not cheap either. It does however provide a great solution, especially in mainframe environments where presentation to the system can be important, as well as setups where many different backup systems need to be kept separate. Because data in and data out can be partitioned off with different servers and even having multiple robots or partitions of the robot it keeps the regulators happy. 
 

 

[TechyBen]

On 3/13/2020 at 8:06 PM, straight_stewie said:

The reason it fails as a thought experiment is because of the sequential write complication of tapes. Which might not even be a fundamental complication.

People seem to think the only way you can use a tape is reel to reel. This is false, a tape can be a continuous loop just as well as the surface of a disc can be a continuous loop.

As I already explained, density informs the length of the tape, which tells us the feasibility of running magnetic tape in a continuous loop as opposed to running a discontinuous roll of tape reel to reel.

You can run tape using spinning heads. You could turn it into a frisbie. You could use it as a holographic projection medium... it starts to stop being tape by that point and start being a different technology. I could build a chocolate bicycle, if I make my chocolate bicycle out of steel.