Recommened Tape Backup software

[Bill Gradwohl]

On Thu, 2005-06-30 at 22:53 -0400, Julian Underwood wrote:
> Could someone recommend a good backup software which can handle this
> task?  I understand that Amanda is quite good, but doesn't support
> appending to multiple tapes "out of the box."

You didn't state how much disk you're looking to backup, and how often,
etc.

This isn't really answering your specific question, but its something to
consider.

We gave up on tape a few years ago. We're using D2D (Disk to disk). We
set up some clients on D2D also, and they're not going back to tape
either. One client (Engineering firm - lots of huge CAD files) has 2TB
of primary storage and 4TB of removable backup disk, plus a 300Gig
external USB drive to do the job on a FC3 server.

The removable disk is actually 2 sets of RAID 5 arrays of drives on two
3WARE Escalade SATA controllers. One set is taking backups while the
other is off site. While a set is in the server, the USB is used to
backup the backup array and it too goes off site every day. They just
attach its twin USB drive to keep things going.

The benefit of this is that we snapshot the server 9 times a day, so
someone can reach for a messed up CAD file from one of the snapshots
from earlier in the day, or grab one from a week ago that's spinning on
the backup disk.

Should a fire or other catastrophe hit their site, they have backup off
site to get them back to yesterday. Tape can't do any better, and disk
is much more reliable.

Admittedly, these are custom setups, but there's software available to
help control such environments. 

-- 
Bill Gradwohl
(817) 224-9400
bill at ycc.com