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The Tao of Backup

169 points · 59 comments · vntok

  1. throwaway81523 · · focus · HN ↗
    Haven't seen that in ages and thought it had moved. 20GB tape containing all the corporate goodies. That makes me smile.
    1. Joel_Mckay · · focus · HN ↗
      The $/TiB storage cost currently creates weird choices in backup media... even making some older media formats economical again. Just finished a consumer storage option survey yesterday.

      Even if you account for consumer drive+spare cost, a 8TB HDD is still the best JBOD option. For under several dozen 25GB projects, the BD-R disc drive is currently the cheapest media backup option (about 35% cheaper than HDD above 12TiB). Note 50G and 100G BD EOL media are actually equal to or a worse deal than HDD.

      Also, HPE LTO9 18GB Tapes are currently around 5 to 15 times cheaper than HDD and SSD in terms of data storage cost, but the fixed cost of tape auto-loaders and drives don't always make sense until you have a significant amount of backup data. Tapes may also create a single point of failure in use... so incremental backups are a non-zero risk, and triple redundant hardware is required (old hardware gets hard to find.)

      The classic joke is still true: "Fast, cheap, or good.. choose any two..."

      Best of luck =3

      1. nxobject · · focus · HN ↗
        I've been down "LTO at home?" rabbit-hole... I nearly ended up buying a SAS HBA, until I realized that S3 Glacier is tape-as-a-service.
        1. sdcfgy · · focus · HN ↗
          S3 is too expensive to do a restore from. And you have to restore to verify.
          1. mrweasel · · focus · HN ↗
            Depending on the amount of data you have, might it not be less expensive than build the tape drive?
            1. sdcfgy · · focus · HN ↗
              I paid < $400 for my LTO5
              1. mrweasel · · focus · HN ↗
                I assume used. Sadly I'm not really in a market where that type of equipment is widely available second hand.
                1. sdcfgy · · focus · HN ↗
                  Yeah used with 1 year warranty.

                  Ah that sucks :(

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