Tim Jones
Forum Replies Created
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Swami,
While what you’re trying to do is easily accomplished with some basic scripts, this is best discussed with our support team. Please open a support ticket at your convenience and we will be happy to discuss your options.
Tim
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Tim Jones
CTO – TOLIS Group, Inc.
https://www.tolisgroup.com
BRU … because it’s the RESTORE that matters! -
You may absolutely contact me directly. I understand your frustration and we witness it with customers every day. I even outlined these types of issues in a blog post a while back:
Excerpt from What’s the big deal with how an LTO (or other) tape is written?
Additionally, symbolic links (referenced files or aliases in OS X) are not supported, nor are special characters such as the bullet (OPT-8) that Mac users often use when naming files. From the current LTFS documentation:
File permissions
The LTFS application manages a common set of file permissions for all files and users; file and directory ownership is not recorded to tape. The only permission that is tracked is write-protect information. Files or directories that are write-protected have their permission bits set to 555; write-enabled files and directories have their permission set to 777. By default the user and group information is set to that of the current user; this can be overridden by use of the -o uid and -o gid options to the LTFS application.
File types
The LTFS application does not support the creation of symbolic links or hard links within the tape file system. Attempting to create a link or copy a link to tape will result in a “Function not implemented” error. If using the cp command to copy to tape, the ‘-L’ option may be helpful to follow symlinks.
The LTFS application also does not support creation of special files and will report “Function not implemented”.
File names
To maintain compatibility when copying files between multiple platforms, it is strongly recommended that the following characters should not be used in LTFS for file names, directory names, or extended attributes:* ? < > : ” | / \
Note that the documentation entry for filenames doesn’t mention to not use non US-ASCII filenames, but that is what it actually boils down to. If you use non US-ASCII (UTF-16, special characters, or reserved characters), your copy operation will fail. However, properly handled by the archive container format, all of these characters can be dealt with on all three supported systems.
Other formats like TAR, P5-native, and BRU all deal with these because they are not really issues, but rather another weakness in the design of the lowest level LTFS specification.
Tim
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Tim Jones
CTO – TOLIS Group, Inc.
https://www.tolisgroup.com
BRU … because it’s the RESTORE that matters! -
The “cd” command stands for “Change Directory”. It’s the Terminal equivalent to opening a Finder window in a specific folder.
To take what I typed above further, if the folder you were copying onto the tape was /Volumes/Array1/Project23, you would type:
cd /Volumes/Array1/Project23
sudo find . -name ".DS_Store" -delete
You may then drag and drop the folder “Project23” onto the tape (do NOT open it, or you’ll get a new .DS_Store file 🙂 ).Also, note that the password that is asked for is your user’s password on the system.
Tim
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Tim Jones
CTO – TOLIS Group, Inc.
https://www.tolisgroup.com
BRU … because it’s the RESTORE that matters! -
In the terminal, ‘cd’ into the folder you’re copying to tape and execute this command:
sudo find . -name ".DS_Store" -delete
Be aware that any time that you open a folder on the Mac, if a .DS_Store file doesn’t exist, Finder will create it.BTW – you don’t harm anything deleting these files unless you’re very specific about your Finder window layouts. These files don’t otherwise affect your files.
Tim
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Tim Jones
CTO – TOLIS Group, Inc.
https://www.tolisgroup.com
BRU … because it’s the RESTORE that matters! -
Of course, I’m going to say that LTO tape is your best long term option, but you do have options in the disk world if that’s where you wish to stay.
If you have a free PCIe slot in your existing Mac Pro, the combination of a Highpoint Technologies 2722 SAS HBA and a 4 or 8 drive external SAS chassis (we like the Sans Digital units here for non-Rackmount installations) can provide from 8TB to 64TB of space and you can go to RAID 5 and get a combination of resiliency and capacity.
For what you’ve described, you could use the Sans Digital TR4X with 4 Seagate 6TB Archive-class drives.
This configuration would give you ~18TB of useable space in RAID-5 configuration. These particular drives are not designed for speed, but rather for long term storage. In a 4 drive RAID-5 configuration, the resulting volume is still respectably fast and perfect for offload/archival, but it wouldn’t be a good solution for live editing.
The SANS Digital line also offer Firewire versions of the TR4 units if you don’t have an available slot, but you would be limited in your RAID options without the dedicated RAID HBA.
HTH,
Tim
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Tim Jones
CTO – TOLIS Group, Inc.
https://www.tolisgroup.com
BRU … because it’s the RESTORE that matters! -
[Neil Sadwelkar] “So, backing up day-wise and letting space go ‘in the end’ of each tape is the easiest solution for labelling, storage and restore.
“This, I can totally understand and agree that it’s a great workflow.
[Neil Sadwelkar] “But one question. Supposing I did backup 48 TB into one set of, say 21 tapes. And send off the tapes and drives.
Later, if someone asks me to restore a specific file or folder, can I restore with only the concerned tape/s? Or do I need the entire set of 21? This is significant because backup tapes are often shipped out to faraway locations, so shipping back would be required.
“We’re getting a bit specific to BRU, but in our case, absolutely. If what you’re needing to restore is on tape 3 of a 21 tape set, you ONLY need tape 3 with a BRU archive set. In fact, in BRU PE you can select what you want to restore in total and we’ll tell you which exact tapes you’ll need to restore the selected data so that you know ahead of time what to pull back in.
Tim
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Tim Jones
CTO – TOLIS Group, Inc.
https://www.tolisgroup.com
BRU … because it’s the RESTORE that matters! -
[Neil Sadwelkar] “This, coupled with the fact that you may not be able to split some folders or files, (so some tapes may need to be closed at 2 TB or less), budget for 2 TB per tape to allow for this ‘wastage’.
“This brings up a question that I’ve never been able to get a reasonable answer for:
Why are folks so worried about splitting files over tape boundaries?
The BRU format handles this automatically and has successfully for 30+ years now. I understand that other formats like some tar versions and LTFS don’t offer this feature, but that’s not a reason to have to manage your backup sessions to that level of minutiae. With BRU solutions, you just toss the 48TB of data over and we’ll deal with the heavy lifting and prompt as new tapes are needed (or automatically change them if you have a library).
I really would appreciate input on this to better understand the concerns involved with splitting files across tapes.
Tim
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Tim Jones
CTO – TOLIS Group, Inc.
https://www.tolisgroup.com
BRU … because it’s the RESTORE that matters! -
You didn’t say that in this thread. In this thread, your implication was that our products made life harder for the user. You might want to re-read the whole thing.
Tim
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Tim Jones
CTO – TOLIS Group, Inc.
https://www.tolisgroup.com
BRU … because it’s the RESTORE that matters! -
Hmmm, funny that you should mention Discovery since the number one complaint at the Discovery help desk – according to none other than Josh Derby in front of witnesses at the SMPTE conference – is that many submitted tapes can’t be mounted and must be resubmitted by the production teams.
And I’m certain that the Mateusz agrees that LTFS is truly reliable in light of the post that started this thread.
Sorry if this sounds like sour grapes, folks, but the job of any tape backup / archival solution is to restore the data that is supposedly written onto the tape. I get very frustrated by vendors that ONLY have LTFS as a tape option promoting LTFS as a robust and trustworthy solution while the users (who actually matter) are calling us every day looking for a replacement for a failing LTFS install.
All I can do is offer our solutions to those of you looking for LTO storage with the commitment that you will get proper support from our team members and that you will be able to restore your tape-based data tomorrow and in 20 years.
Tim
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Tim Jones
CTO – TOLIS Group, Inc.
https://www.tolisgroup.com
BRU … because it’s the RESTORE that matters! -
Not to keep beating this dead horse, Tom … but, you can’t do any of that without installing the correct LTFS software. Your previous post implied that LTFS just magically worked and you poo-poo’d BRU and Archiware by saying that you need the specific software to restore those tapes. It may not have been your intent, but that is the way that it read.
To access a tape drive on OS X, you MUST install some sort of software. With LTFS, you must make sure that you’re installing the proper sets of software as some of the packages work prior to 10.9, while others work with 10.10, but not 10.7 or 10.8. I can’t speak for Archiware, but BRU products work with all versions of OS X (including the 10.11 El Capitan Public Beta) with one package download and install. It also supports every vendor’s tape technology with one exception – the Quantum Super Loader 3, and that’s because of mechanical issues, not interface and transport layer issues.
Additionally, restoring data from a BRU tape is always free – you just download and install the demo, so cost is not even an issue in that case.
As for your tests of LTFS, I doubt that knowledge makes Mateaus feel batter with his restore failures. It’s not about what you might have seen in a lab environment, but rather what the users see when they need their data.
That’s our service mark – BRU … because it’s the RESTORE that matters!
Tim
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Tim Jones
CTO – TOLIS Group, Inc.
https://www.tolisgroup.com
BRU … because it’s the RESTORE that matters!
