Jon Allen
2
COW Coins
3
Storage & Archiving Coins
Forum Replies Created
-
My experience is that they have over promised in terms of response time and rollout of updates and new products. On the tech support side, if you send a ticket with, say, 3 parts to it, they will pick 1 part to respond to and ignore the other 2. Other times I won’t get a response at all. Seems like they are understaffed. I’m always open to other options, there is nothing worse than feeling tethered to an unresponsive vendor. If anyone has recommendations for transferring a bru tape library to another format that has crc and verification under ubuntu I am all ears:)
-
Hi Tim
When you say contact support…I tried to get them to explain the upstaging maybe 3 or 4 times and never got a satisfactory answer. Due to the delay in BRU PE for linux I have had to use Server. The support team is very slow to get back to me, and often when they do, they don’t read the full ticket and ask for information that has already been provided.
I’m happy to pay $279 USD/annual for support, if I get support. It takes alot of man power to make that happen and so maybe it is being pragmatic to consider putting together a knowledge base? There must be some sort of internal wiki that the tech support use to save time, why not make a version for the customers to help themselves? Charge $150/year for “basic” support with the current 48 hour ticket response time, plus a wiki, and then the $279 for actual one to one support with same day response.
Your thoughts?
-
Thanks Malcolm – I have 100+ tapes already in bru format, it works very well and I like knowing that the company has been around for so long without being bought/sold/merged/spun off. I think bru server for linux will work for me.
-
Any updates as of Dec 2018? Tired of using mac os for a file server its too unstable…need to switch to linux
-
Hi Rachel, I will share you my 3 month mark report from trying LTO. I chose LTO6 because its the cheapest per TB and I have a closet to store the tapes. I can understand if you are paying per square inch in a data centre why LTO7 or 8 might make more sense but there is still a higher price per TB of the media. Its the same media, its just that they use the extra profit to fund R&D. If you are a non business user like me it makes more sense to go with -6. Plus you will have more pieces of media per TB, meaning you reduce the impact of data loss from any single cartridge failing.
I got an internal HP LTO6 + generic SAS enclosure from Discount Data Mart (on ebay and the web) in Washington state. The seller Todd was very friendly and helpful. Gave me a special price just for calling. The bezel/faceplate of the drive had a small crack when it arrived and he arranged for a replacement to be sent out immediately which I changed out myself in a few minutes.
The best prices on media are at backupworks.com, they have good service and only sell new media. Some sellers mix new and recertified media and this can cause problems down the road. I pay $25 usd for factory fresh Fuji BaFe LTO6.
Given that all generations of LTO drive are easily obtainable and serviced by multiple independent companies, it is not valid to argue for future compatibility by buying LTO7. When you are ready to upgrade you will use your drive to offload the tape data to disk, and then back out again to whatever future technology you choose.
Re: Software – I went with BRU PE because it does not use the buggy LTFS, instead it uses their own file system with extra redundancy checking. They were having some issues with Apple’s updates breaking certain things but its fixed now. In any event as long as you stick to OS 10.12.6 you will be fine.
Re: Noise – if you have not used a tape drive before you will want to get a 5 meter SAS cable to put it behind a door or something. Two motors, one constantly accelerating, one constantly decelerating. Its exquisitely awful.
-
I am doing good with .28 (build 432) on os 10.12.6. I think they are doing the best they can but apple keeps changing things with their updates. Apple doesn’t seem to think this is a problem but in the long term i am looking at switching to linux. Ubuntu LTS (long term support) is good until 2021. I believe Tolis is working on a version of P.E. for linux.
-
Hi Tim
Would the BRU software work with an IBM LTO7 drive? What card do you recommend for a non thunderbolt mac pro on osx 10.12? I’m not a business so your complete drive solutions are out of my price range.
Thanks,
Jon