Thanks Michael, You answered the usage question. With the exception of positioning at times when the tape is faster than the data stream, the tape is only making one pass over the heads per day.
I wouldn't consider the level of use you're describing as significant, at least not in my experience. Whether Bacula or other solutions, the only errors I see in my backups are OS (files in use) related and client communication errors (never had any with Bacula). My hardware is an HP MSL6030 library with two drives served by DP, and a standalone (external, SCSI attached) HP960 tape drive. I get my tapes from HP. There are other brands that have the lifetime warranty, but I don't know which off-hand. I think Fuji used to give a lifetime warranty on their DLT IV tapes, but I don't know about LTO. It costs a little extra, but I make it up in time not spent calculating/budgeting for, or purchasing, replacement tapes. I use less Maalox and the boss likes the sound of it, too. FWIW, Don. On Thu, 2007-02-01 at 15:24 -0700, Michael Morgan wrote: > I appreciate your feedback. The daily tapes are written to 12 times each > day (full and incrementals on the same tape), and each daily tape is > used once each week. There are also weekly tapes that are written to > once and used once/month, and a monthly pool that is written to each > month, with the tapes recycled once/year. They have had both daily and > weekly tapes go bad. > > I'll look into diagnostics on the drive and see where it goes from there. > > Thanks again! > > Mike > > Don MacArthur wrote: > > [I just re-read this and it sounds gruff. I'm just in a hurry, I do > > sympathize with you. Read this with a helpful tone, which is how it's > > intended. Thx] > > > > You say how many jobs run each day, but not how many tapes are written. > > In this case, the number of tapes is more relevant than the number of > > jobs. > > > > I use LTO2 and 3. I and another SA at another shop have been running > > both for a year. I use 1 tape a day and it gets written to twice each > > month. I have a pool of 3s that never leave the library. Their > > contents expire every 2 weeks, and they get overwritten about once a > > month (I have excess capacity, so the math is wrong but the facts are > > correct). > > > > Neither shop nor the software (HP DataProtector and Bacula) have cleaned > > any of the drives with any effect on problems we had. When we did it > > was to satisfy the tech support person on the other end of the phone > > (obviously not Bacula as I've never had to call tech support for it [8-) > > and it didn't solve the problem. I have a situation where DP will > > incorrectly mark a tape bad if a specific situation occurs. But, it's a > > false positive. LTO2 and 3 are the same in this respect. > > > > Cutting to the chase: > > 1. Buy only tapes with lifetime warranties, so you don't care if the > > tape goes bad. Just re-run the backup and get the tape replaced. > > 2. Your client probably has a drive problem, possibly caused by excess > > cleaning. If it is cleaned once and the problem continues, it wasn't > > the tape drive. It's kind of like rebooting/insanity. "Insanity is > > repeating the same thing and hoping for a different outcome." See if > > the drive vendor has any diagnostic utilities. > > > > Don. > > > > On Thu, 2007-02-01 at 11:55 -0700, Michael Morgan wrote: > >> First of all, let me just say that Bacula is wonderful. I migrated to it > >> after a very unreliable (and expensive) commercial product > >> implementation. Bacula works flawlessly, and is very simple to configure > >> and operate. Great product! Keep up the good work. > >> > >> Now for my question: > >> > >> Does anyone have experience with practical tape and drive life spans of > >> LTO-2 drives and tapes? > >> > >> We have a client with an LTO-2 drive that runs 12 backup jobs/day (one > >> full and 11 incremental). They have cleaned their drive regularly, but > >> lately, they seem to be losing a lot of tapes to errors. > >> > >> Ideas? Suggestions? > >> > >> Thanks for all the help I see on this list. > -- Don MacArthur 719.599.5999 Christian & Missionary Alliance 8595 Explorer Dr. Colorado Springs, CO 80920 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Using Tomcat but need to do more? Need to support web services, security? Get stuff done quickly with pre-integrated technology to make your job easier. Download IBM WebSphere Application Server v.1.0.1 based on Apache Geronimo http://sel.as-us.falkag.net/sel?cmd=lnk&kid=120709&bid=263057&dat=121642 _______________________________________________ Bacula-users mailing list Bacula-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bacula-users
