LTO6 Budget Solutions

[Tim Jones]

LTO-6 is ONLY available in SAS or Fibre Channel
The Only SAS HBAs that work properly with tape on the Mac platform are ATTO ExpressSAS HBAs
The ATTO ExpressSAS HBAs are only available as PCIe cards, so only Intel Mac Pro or the very last G5 Power Macs will work.

$3K won’t even get you a bare drive from a manufacturer.

To get a full blown, standalone LTO-6 solution, expect to spend a minimum of around $4,800. LTO-5 is around $3,990.

As for currently available non-server tape solutions for CatDV Desktop, nothing’s there “yet” … watch this space.

Tim
—
Tim Jones
CTO – TOLIS Group, Inc.
https://www.productionbackup.com
BRU … because it’s the RESTORE that matters!

[Scott Goddard]

Hit the $ key instead of the £.. But yes around $5K is what I am looking at. BRU seems to be the most cost effective at the moment.

Is there any preference over LTO drives amongst Mac Users? HP seem to be popular. Anyone with experience of Overland?

[Tim Jones]

Keep in mind that Overland do not support the Mac platform directly. Right now, HP, Tandberg Data, and our bundles are the only places that you will see proper Mac support if you need help.

Tim
—
Tim Jones
CTO – TOLIS Group, Inc.
https://www.productionbackup.com
BRU … because it’s the RESTORE that matters!

[Scott Goddard]

That’s good to know, thanks

[Pat Horridge]

If budget is tight I’d go LTO-5, we did, with a storagedna system. And we went the LTFS route to help longevity rather than propriety software like BRU
At least with an LTFS tape all I need is the drive and a driver for the OS and I can read the tape like a drive. I can catalogue it and restore files easily.
Buck per TB the LTO -5 prices worked out best and even the tapes are better value.
And at 1.5 – 3 TB its just right for drive copies.

Pat Horridge
Technical Director, Trainer, Avid Certified Instructor
VET
Production Editing Digital Media Design DVD
T +44 (0)20 7505 4701 | F +44 (0)20 7505 4800 | E pat@vet.co.uk |
http://www.vet.co.uk | Lux Building 2-4 Hoxton Square London N1 6US

[Scott Goddard]

Is the storage DNA system integrated with CatDV? I believe their system requires the worker node to assist in the integration?

How does everyone else feel about LTFS? I have read lots of arguments against using it as an archive system.

[Pat Horridge]

We’re looking at CATDV integration via the worker node as an option but the StorageDNA setup comes with it’s own server and web based job management and “miniMAM” solution as well and that’s really quite nice and simple.
Curretnly the only true way to “Archive” (which needs to have an expected life of 100 years and be simple to retrieve duringt hat time) is printing back to film and I don’t imagine many have that sort of budget.
So LTO isn’t an Archive solution by that definition.
30 year life stated for the actual tapes (but most likley longer than that) And with a 2 version backwards read compatability our LTO-5 tapes will be good till LTO-7 which is on the development road track. Obviously LTO-6 buys you possible a few more years of player support.

We spent a lot of time looking at options and the technologies and a lot of players have vested interests in pushing their solutions and will of course work hard to find issues with alternative solutions. So finding a balanced view is near impossible.
We made the choice on LTFS based on it being a simple implementation and not being tied to a specific piece of software that would need to still be around in the future and need that OS available.
If LTFS gets included in future OS’s in the future then it’s even easier.
Teh really neat thing with LTFS is with the tape mounted I can browse to the StorageDNA server and actually read the tape in a shared folder.

[Scott Goddard]

The more I look into the more appealing the CacheA solution is especially considering it’s integration with CatDV.

[Mark Raudonis]

I’ll add another positive vote for “Storage DNA”.

https://storagedna.com/

We’ve had our system in place for over a year now and it’s been a savior in many ways. Only issue we’ve had is when some of our file names were, uh, unusual! I learned that some of our assistants were actually copying and pasting the URL for various stills into the filename!!! This created havoc. Solution. Don’t do that! Obviously, there are certain characters that are NOT COOL in a file name string. Other than that, I love the abilibity to search the archive and selectively recall a specific file, not the entire tape.

Storage DNA has some interesting synergy with AVID as well if that’s your NLE of choice.

mark

[Tim Jones]

I agree with Pat about LTO-5 being a true bargain for long term storage. If you really aren’t facing jobs that require 10’s of TB of data in a single operation, the approximately US$900 price difference will purchase a lot of LTO-5 media (US$36.50 QTY 1 from us).

However, something that many base the longevity planning statements on – when LTO-7 ships, your LTO-5 devices and tapes do not become obsolete. Here we are, 12 years later, and you can still buy a brand new LTO-2 drive from HP. Why is this important? It means that as long as a capacity point (such as 1.5TB) works for you, you don’t really need to rush out and update to the latest and greatest. We still have some customers actively using LTO-3 drives on a daily basis because each night’s performance (including video capture) fits in 400GB.

On the manufacturing side of things, we expect a current device generation to have a minimum of a 15 year availability cycle. Therefore, it’s a safe bet that you’ll still be able to buy a new LTO-5 drive in 2026.

And, if you use a technology that supports full media migration (such as our BRU solutions), you can readily move your archived data to new technology (say LTO-5 to LTO-7) while retaining full recoverability – even if the technology is of a completely different type (those “gigaquad” chips from Star Trek).

Tim
—
Tim Jones
CTO – TOLIS Group, Inc.
https://www.productionbackup.com
BRU … because it’s the RESTORE that matters!