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Purchase decisions between BRU Producer Edition or Image Products PreRoll Post
It has come to a point where I simply have to use LTO-6 as a viable long-term media. Sadly, the HGST 3 Tb drives that I bought 3 years ago are showing bad sectors big time. Of the 140 batch, about 8 already shown. That’s very disturbing. Luckily, I made two backups and never did the two backups gone bad. Not to say that it will never happen, there’s still that small chance. In general hdd is something I simply can’t to to sleep on after couple years. HDDs are still needed because of their very fast response time. But for long-term, off-line storage, they’re a ticking decaying time bomb. I do not like having to refresh every other year to keep it alive. It’s very costly in power utility bill.
I’m using the HP 6250. The LTFS is great when you archive. But restoring it is another story. It’s snail pace vs backup. Just not what I have in mind for LTO-6. I’m very concerned that in a decade from now, will that LTO-6 still be able to recover on the latest Mac Pro or whatever name they have in 2024. My archives are mostly priceless & timeless raw cam originals from P2 all the way to F55 4K SxS. I will keep them all and always want the original vs. the transcoded version. Those are ideal for LTO because it doesn’t change a lot. I average about 40-50 Tb per month in raw content. Purchasing twin 4 Tb hdds add up quickly. The latest price for HP MP LTO-6 media is about $70. A $40 drop just 6 months ago when it was $110. That’s quite attractive now to get into LTO-6.
It looks like the top two candidates are BRU PE or PreRoll post. I’m still skeptical on PreRoll post as it’s fairly new to the market and don’t know if they’re in biz in the next decade or more. Imagine Products is a small company. Has not yet established long-term and that’s a risk. Anybody has any opinions on them? I need to make a good decision and would prefer to stick to a single software solution for many years to come.
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34 Replies
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[Sam Lee] “The LTFS is great when you archive. But restoring it is another story. It’s snail pace vs backup. Just not what I have in mind for LTO-6.”
Keep in mind that PreRoll Post uses LTFS…
Tim
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Tim Jones
CTO – TOLIS Group, Inc.
https://www.productionbackup.com
BRU … because it’s the RESTORE that matters! -
I’m relatively new to this LTFS thing. For me, LTFS just doesn’t correspond to enterprise scale archival. It’s more for simple, smaller scale manual backup. No spanning and verification is a no-no for me. The time if take to manually sort each hdd to 2.5 Tb to fit LTO-6 max capacity is already eating up too much valuable time. Both apps cost the same. I’m leaned toward purchasing BRU PE within this week. Will start to archive 120 3 Tb hdds and 150 4 Tb hdds. Don’t want to waste time starting w/ LTFS and then switch to another format 1/3 of the way into the long archival process.
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Sam,
While I’ll agree that LTFS is not without its pitfalls, we see growing traction for it becoming the standard for writing to LTO in the media and entertainment realm. It is unlikely if you were to get started with a good solution that you would find you have to change.
I would note that several manufacturers, including Cache-A, have addressed the issues you are encountering. We support tape spanning as do, for example Crossroads and SDNA. We also solve the restore speed issue you’ve identified – this occurs when restore file lists are not in the order the files reside on tape, causing the tape to have to shuttle back and forth to the start of each file. Our LTFS restores are always presorted for tape order and can be just as fast as archiving.
You should be aware that we are seeing more and more interchange and delivery being specified for LTFS and traditional tar being used only for in house archiving (we support both formats). For example, Discovery Communications now accepts from its content producers only LTFS for delivery of footage, graphics and program masters for all its various channels.
Tom Goldberg
Cache-A Corporation
433 Park Point Drive #285
Golden, CO 80401
mailto:tom.goldberg@cache-a.com
https://cache-a.com -
[Tom Goldberg] “I would note that several manufacturers, including Cache-A, have addressed the issues you are encountering. We support tape spanning as do, for example Crossroads and SDNA”
And, you pay quite a premium to get theses add-on abilities. These “features” also add a layer above LTFS that then obviate the LTFS open source status since you’re now adding proprietary wrappers around the LTFS core to get that new functionality.
- LTFS – Free with your drive
- BRU PE – $499
- PreRoll Post – $499
- Cache-A – PowerCache (required starting point) $10,995, 48 Slot, LTO-6 Library for tape support – $10,795
- Crossroads – StrongBox is available in three models, starting at $20,000 and scaling according to archive capacity and capabilities. StrongBox T1 manages up to 200 million files. StrongBox T3 manages up to 500 million files, and StrongBox T3 Advanced manages up to five billion files.
- StorageDNA – no hard pricing data has been made available, but some customers have indicated that the “get your foot in the door” pricing is over $10 and rises quickly for larger installations.
As you can see, you can get these added “features” from these vendors – but you need to be prepared for the sticker shock that accompanies what you think that you’re getting for free.
[Tom Goldberg] “For example, Discovery Communications now accepts from its content producers only LTFS for delivery of footage, graphics and program masters for all its various channels.”
And, according to our conversation with the folks at Discovery, their number one support issue is the inability to read LTFS tapes sent in from Clients.
BRU Server M&E and BRU PE, on the other hand, cost $499 and take care of all of these issues by NOT using LTFS. The tapes created are truly compatible across over 24 operating systems, provide full verification and autidability – even long after the backup operation – works with all vendors’ tape and library devices and don’t require that you search for your tape vendor’s proper LTFS drivers and support packages.
Tim
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Tim Jones
CTO – TOLIS Group, Inc.
https://www.productionbackup.com
BRU … because it’s the RESTORE that matters! -
Sorry Tim, but I need to correct some of the information in your reply.
[Tim Jones] “These “features” also add a layer above LTFS that then obviate the LTFS open source status since you’re now adding proprietary wrappers around the LTFS core “
There are no “layers” or “wrappers” used – all tapes are still LTFS conforming and interchangeable – not proprietary. For example, for spanning what we do (as I believe other manufacturers do) is simply automatically re-create your file tree as needed across tapes. This would be exactly the same as if you manually copied a too-large data set across several disk drives.
[Tim Jones] “Cache-A – PowerCache (required starting point) $10,995, 48 Slot, LTO-6 Library for tape support – $10,795”
You can certainly go big with Cache-A’s premier solution of a Power-Cache and Library, but this is not a required starting point. All LTFS capabilities are in all Cache-A models (except Simul-Copy which requires at least 2 drives). Our entry unit which is a self-contained appliance with an LTO-5 drive starts at $7995 including all hardware, software and warrantied for 1 year with support, ready to go out of the box and fully tar and LTFS capable. No cards to install or software to load, just connect it to your network and start archiving.
[Tim Jones] “according to our conversation with the folks at Discovery, their number one support issue is the inability to read LTFS tapes sent in from Clients”
Discovery may have had early LTFS delivery issues, but they are still very much committed to the format and are working past startup issues with their content producers. They do have some special requirements that, while not making their tapes proprietary, do require specific files and LTFS formatting parameters to write them correctly. Cache-A’s latest releases write tapes that pass 2 out of 3 of Discovery’s delivery specifications (Footage Masters and Graphics Masters) and the 3rd spec’d tape (Program Masters) is at Discovery for validation as I write this.
Tom Goldberg
Cache-A Corporation
433 Park Point Drive #285
Golden, CO 80401
mailto:tom.goldberg@cache-a.com
https://cache-a.com -
Tom –
If the user doesn’t buy those various solutions – they get none of those features. That’s my point. Maybe “propriety” wasn’t the right word, but the lack of your (and their) extra cost components means that the user doesn’t gain access to those features without spending quite a bit more money (your’s being the lesser of the crowd).
I was comparing LTO-6 to LTO-6. If you wish to compare LTO-5, then our solution drops to $6,973. And, because we ARE connected by direct attach SAS (which only adds $499 if you need Thunderbolt II), you get full drive performance of 140MB/sec (LTO-5) or 180MB/sec (LTO-6) instead of 1GbE speed (~85MB/sec to 95MB/sec). I understand that you try to mitigate this buy performing the disk-tape copy out of band so that the network isn’t involved in that step, but the user is still going to be impacted by the network infrastructure when originally copying the clips.
As for Discovery, it’s not just “early” issues as I’ve just gotten off a call with a producer that is VERY frustrated as Discovery have returned their LTFS tapes multiple times – and this is very recently. You can be as committed as you like to a given mechanism, but if the mechanism is flawed, all of the commitment in the world isn’t going to resolve the problems.
Again, none of those issues or additional financial overhead exist with BRU.
Tim
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Tim Jones
CTO – TOLIS Group, Inc.
https://www.productionbackup.com
BRU … because it’s the RESTORE that matters! -
So far after several days of use w/ the BRU PE 3.0.2, I do like the fact that I don’t have to install these annoying HP LTFS drivers and the two other sub drivers. Just the ATTO H680 OSX 10.9.1 drivers and BRU 3.0.2 and be done with it. Archiving huge amount of data to LTO-6 now w/ BRU 3.0.2 in OSX Mavericks. Multitasking w/ FCP 10.1 on light edits. It’s quite smooth and no crashing so far after 3 days straight. I’m looking in the long-term, like a decade from now and I have no idea what other flavors of LTFS will be out there. Need to restore all raw footage for a long-form, decade-long documentary media and BRU 3.0.2 seems to be able to have that ability.
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Sam – thank you for your consideration. We will always work very hard to make sure that BRU lives up to both our claims and your expectations. Unlike what some backup solution providers believe, those two things are NOT mutually exclusive :).
One thing that has been a stable element with BRU is our full support of old archives. The version of BRU that we create today MUST restore the data from some DDS-1, QIC150, and Exabyte 8200 8MM test tapes created as far back as 1988. Heck, even TAR can’t make a claim of that level of backwards compatibility.
Please don’t hesitate to make requests for new features since we serve no purpose if we’re not doing what you need.
Tim
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Tim Jones
CTO – TOLIS Group, Inc.
https://www.productionbackup.com
BRU … because it’s the RESTORE that matters! -
I’m still evaluating by performing various backup types and scenarios. So far I’m testing out the ability to send BRU archives to other TV stations nationally and internationally. The issue I came up with is when I export the catalog, it BRU 3.0.2 says it imports OK but it won’t show up. It only shows up when I actually insert all the LTO-6 cartridges for the Import Tool.app and it will show up. I contacted support and will wait for their answer on this. The story to that 3.5 Tb archive is that the verification was cancelled. This is because I set the cache to a low 128 Kb and not 2048 Kb. Not sure if canceling verification has any effect on not being able to export the catalog out. On another Mac Pro, I took used import tool.app to rebuild the catalog and export it out to a hdd. Then I took that .bru file to another Mac and import it in. This is where the tape catalog will not show up in the Restore portion of the app no matter what or how many times I re-import that .bru catalog. Either a bug or user error here.
Feature request wise, still evaluating mode. But something will pop up for sure after that period. So far it appears that I’ll have to get at least 3-4 LTO-6 drives and at least the same amount of BRU licenses for the volume of data I’m doing to be able to get the archives done quickly. Single LTO-6 drive won’t work out at all.
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Sam,
We’ve used both BRU PE and PreRollPost. We had numerous issues with BRU PE over the couple of years we used it, the software’s GUI is really inconsistent and buggy, and when you build up a good size library of archives, it takes forever for the program to load. PreRollPost uses LTFS, an open standard that is becoming more and more widely adopted, does provide MD5 checksum verification, and orders the files for quick backup and restore, and stores archive data in a MySQL Lite format, which is searchable within the application. If you’ve used the bare bones software HP or IBM provide, this is a different animal altogether. The program has improved in the past year quite a bit and they are very responsive to user feedback.
Most of the responders in the forum have a dog in the hunt, so to say. I’m just a user and have been using tape backup products for 15+ years or more. PRP might not be right for you, but people should definitely try it out before dismissing LTFS altogether. Along with BRU PE, it’s really the most economical solution.
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