Software advice for LTO6 LTFS

[Joe Valenti]

Hello Lewis,

I think StorageDNA has your solution but I’m not 100% sure. My rep at https://www.vtgny.com gave me a demo of StorageDNA a fews ago and I was impressed..

Joe Valenti
Clippn
http://www.clippn.com

[Tim Jones]

It’s sounds like you don’t have a concern for archival and are just looking to use your LTO media like larger floppy disks, so what’s wrong with the default LTFS tools provided by your tape drive vendor? All of the file copies are handled at the OSXFuSE level and can be managed vi drag and drop from File Explorer or Finder. That’s all that you or your client require for this type of data exchange. If you end up with a bad tape, you just recut to from the original data.

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

[Lewis Holleran]

I’m currently just looking at DNA evolution, a lot of interesting features there – probably over featured for what we were looking for but could open some doors.

Tim, we would prefer to use a method which checks the data during transfer rather than the explorer/finder based drag and drop. We wouldn’t be keeping the original data for long, we don’t want to risk missing data on the tapes. It’s unlikely and unviable that clients will check the tapes before we delete the data.
Often our clients request that we back up to drive – I see a few of the solutions offer simultaneous/automated drive and tape back up.
Personally I’m also interested in what features these products have which could open up possibilities to improve our workflows and take the strain off our servers.

[Martin Greenwood]

Hi Lewis,

I would recommend using LTFS software rather than the Finder.
I’m biased because I develop YoYottaID LTFS, but you need it for these reasons…
Checksum verification of transfer.
Creation of two or more copies in parallel.
Both of the above are essential if you are about to delete the original files!
Translation of characters in file names and paths than aren’t valid in LTFS.
Spreadsheet, PDF and email reports confirming the backup.

Then there are many other things like queuing different jobs to tape, spanning large archives over multiple tapes, parsing of clip timecode, resolution and codec and storing this in a searchable database log.

The tapes created will still be readable on any system. Windows, Mac or Linux, with or without extra software.
Please get in touch if you have any other questions.

Best,

Martin Greenwood
CTO, YoYotta
martin@yoyotta.com

[Lewis Holleran]

Hi Martin,

I’ve been impressed by what I’ve seen from YoYotta – do you know if there are plans to produce a windows version?

Cheers
L

[Martin Greenwood]

Thanks Lewis. We’re focused on the Mac, so we won’t be developing a Windows version. You could run YoYottaID LTFS on a mid range MacMini, this would give you a low cost ingest / backup system with dual Thunderbolt and four USB3 ports. Allowing easy connection of client/shuttle drives and sharing into NAS/SAN.
As mentioned the LTFS tapes created are cross platform. Compare this with hard drives where you can have HFS+, NTFS and EXT formats each of which may or may not be compatible with customers operating system.
Here you can see a summary of the pros/cons of each Apple Mac model for different purposes.

https://yoyotta.com/yoyotta/hardware.html

More of our customers are using LTFS for backup, deliverables and project interchange with their customers.

Martin

[Bleakley Mcdowell]

The open source scripts on the AMIA github page work very well for us.

https://github.com/amiaopensource/ltopers

Bleakley