David Fox
12
COW Coins
13
Storage & Archiving Coins
Forum Replies Created
-
Consider LTO tape for long term ‘cold’ storage. Tapes are more stable/reliable over time than HDD mechanisms, which don’t have particularly long life spans. The big benefit of LTO is the cost / TB however, with LTO-9 tapes storing 18TB and LTO-10 (brand new generation) storing 30TB and 40TB depending on which media you purchase.
An LTO-9 tape is about USD 90 currently.
Of course, you need an LTO drive and perhaps software to manage your library of tapes and catalog of files on those tapes, since tapes don’t behave like HDD’s.
Worth checking out in more detail.
-
Hi Lisa, you could look at Archiware P5, https://archiware.com which is an archive-to-LTO solution with a browsable index of everything archived. Check out https://youtu.be/N8ArRIZcq_M?feature=shared for quick overview. Our USP is our MAM-like index that can also show thumbnails and proxies of media files in the archive. We run on any OS and work with any LTO hardware, single drives and libraries. We can import LTFS tapes from other systems also.
I am the UK distributor for this product at https://jpydistribution.com. You could contact us for UK reseller to discuss requirement with.
archiware.com
Data Management for Media and Entertainment | Archiware P5
Archiware P5 is a data management software for those in the media and entertainment industry to conveniently archive and backup to a single LTO drive.
-
Hi Brett, no expert here but I work with Archiware P5 who have product competitive to DNAEvolution.
We’ve been working with StorageDNA to integrate P5 into Fabric.
My understanding is that Fabric is a storage analytics tool, that sits over all your online storage + LTO archive, cloud etc, and shows everything in one view. One can spot duplication, move stuff around etc. So Fabric doesn’t support tape directly, but plugs into several LTO softwares, including Evolution, P5 and more on the way. Whatever the customer might already have, they can use with Fabric, that’s the idea.
This allows StorageDNA to focus on their new Fabric product, which has broad applicability, while not having to worry about Evolution being the only way to get to LTO.
Hope this helps clarify a little.
-
Maybe also consider an LTO drive and a few 12TB LTO-8 tapes which are a better storage medium for long-term archive and won’t require spinning up periodically and replacing so quickly. Cost per TB will be lower (based on cost of tapes) so you’ll be able to have two copies at different locations.
-
Check out Archiware P5 (https://www.archiware.com/solutions/editshare) which has a direct integration with EditShare Flow and does everything you mention above.
There’s a video I put together on that page that runs through the entire installation and use of P5 with Flow in around 20 minutes.
P5 has its own index of everything written to tape in addition to the one maintained in the MAM. We write to single LTO drives, LTO libraries (including multi-drive) and disk/cloud storage. Upcoming versions allow migration of archived data between LTO and cloud.
Disclosure: I work for Archiware.
David Fox
-
Hi Kevin, i’m in the UK and represent Archiware P5 (archiware.com) a software product that does archive to LTO standalone drives and libraries. P5 has a web UI and tracks everything archived in a browsable/searchable index. The index can also store thumbnails and proxies of media files.
Users mostly use LTO as archive storage, we also support cloud and disk. LTO gets more popular as the size of the tapes go up. We convert many customers from piles of USB drives, to a few LTO tapes and relatively limitless capacity. Best to write two copies and keep the tapes in separate places for redundancy.
As a drive recommendation (for Mac) check out.. https://gosymply.com/archive/pro-lto
This webinar recording shows the basics…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SPlIru5RzI4
Best, David Fox
Some contents or functionalities here are not available due to your cookie preferences!This happens because the functionality/content marked as “Google Youtube” uses cookies that you choosed to keep disabled. In order to view this content or use this functionality, please enable cookies: click here to open your cookie preferences.
-
Hi Jon, just tried to see if direct messages work here, so excuse the two ‘connect’ requests. You can get me via david [at] jpy.com. The BRU offer expired, currently lowest cost option for Archiware P5 is USD 1,680 which provides both backup and archive. May tick all your boxes but more sophisticated product due to full indexing and media-preview capture. David
-
Also investigate Archiware P5 Jon (I represent it in the UK) which both runs on Linux and has an internal database (index) which tracks everything you archive. UI is web-based, index can be browsed and searched in browser. Heavily used in media/broadcast people.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SPlIru5RzI4
David
Some contents or functionalities here are not available due to your cookie preferences!This happens because the functionality/content marked as “Google Youtube” uses cookies that you choosed to keep disabled. In order to view this content or use this functionality, please enable cookies: click here to open your cookie preferences.
-
Hello again!
Yes the 5.5hrs to write 9.5GB sounds like a problem somewhere. That’s far too slow.
I honestly don’t know of a good end-user targeted resource for info on LTO tape. Maybe a gap in the market. Archiware have a YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/c/archiwarep5) where I post explainer/training/demo videos, so maybe an opportunity for one explaining what we’ve been discussing here!
Our lowest cost for Archive to LTO product is USD 1,680 which is intended for single users such as yourself. This is already a big reduction in price from our workgroup targeted products. We’re not just throwing a folder onto LTFS but maintain a media index of everything written to all tapes, a database accessible via a browser.
Anyway, not wanting to get too sales-ey on these forums. Hope you’re able to resolve the speed issues. Seems to me that it should be fixable, you just need to figure out where the slowness is coming from.
-
Glad that was useful Shawn. Regards you later point, one thing to bear in mind when writing files to tape, is the file sizes that you’re reading/writing and how they influence speed.
There’s a big different between asking your disk to read thousands of small files, totalling (let’s say) 1TB, versus a small number of large files that have the same total size. Even if your source disk is relatively fast, the reading of thousands of small files will be much slower than reading a few large files. Each file being read has an overhead – it has to be located on the disk, it’s meta-data read, verification checksum calculated etc etc.
Therefore, during the course of backup/archive of your folder, you’ll find the data-rate to tape will slow while reading many small files, and speed up when reading large files. There’s not a lot that you can do to overcome this, just the way of things.