Tim Jones
Forum Replies Created
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The LTO-6 drives are all on equal footing so far as the technology is concerned, so the brand of the drive is less important that the company that you buy FROM. As for where it works, the drive will work anywhere there is a proper connection, so OS platform is not a question.
The real question is one of software to drive the unit. Unlike a disk drive, you can’t simply plug a tape drive (any type of tape drive) into a computer and have it work. You need some sort of software to utilize it. Whether that’s the kernel drivers and tar or cpio on Solaris or Linux, LTFS on Windows, BRU or PreRoll Post on Mac OS, you need some type of tape-specific software to actually use the tape drive.
So, when you decide who to buy the unit FROM, check what you get in the package from that seller. The drive by itself is of no use without the entire package – drive, cables, HBAs, media, and software.
Tim
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Tim Jones
CTO – TOLIS Group, Inc.
https://www.tolisgroup.com
BRU … because it’s the RESTORE that matters! -
Hi Rachael and others,
Think about the value of your data and think about what it would cost you to recreate that data if it was lost. There is a reason why every major studio and post house has chosen BRU to protect their work. In fact, we can happily claim responsibility for more than 31 major motion pictures being recovered from massive system and storage failures since 2004.
If you are looking only for free backup software, you’ll need to look to a platform other than Mac OS and use tools like tar or cpio. There is no tape layer in Mac OS like there is on other Unix-based platforms for accessing tape, so the free options don’t exist on the platform. While tar, cpio, pax, and dd exist on Mac OS, they are not tape-aware. In fact, Apple actually removed the FreeBSD “sequential access” layer from the Darwin kernel back in the 0.99 beta days making native tape access on OS X unavailable. This means that real tape software vendors must create the tape IO layer themselves and that means engineering development expense that doesn’t exist on other platforms.
While you can get LTFS for free on Mac OS, it’s not a true backup/archival application any more than copying files from one hard drive to another is (which is all that the free LTFS tools basically are). Of course, others disagree with my feelings towards LTFS, but I’ve been at this for more than 32 years on over 50 different Unix platforms and I’ve witnessed a lot of “tape pretending to be disk” options come and go with the user generally caught with non-recoverable data.
When you mention your concern of lock in, I can speak for our BRU engine in that a) it has 33 years of cross-platform proven functionality, and b) you get real support from that single vendor that will cover you from the UI down to the manner in which the data is written to and recovered from the tape. BRU is available on more than 21 different platforms and and archive written on one platform can be restored on any of the others. The current version (BRU 19.0) can restore data from an archive that was written as far back as 1988 with our 6.1 version. As for support, our team knows the entire stack from the UI application down to the HBA and system device drivers to how the tape drives and libraries actually work. When dealing with free solutions like LTFS, we are already seeing platform and version incompatibilities depending on who’s LTFS suite and version you use. Also, you really have no one to go to for help if the LTFS core in use doesn’t work properly for you because of it’s “Wild West” open source nature. To quote the copyright and license header for LTFS:
The IBM Linear Tape File system Single Drive Edition is distributed in the
hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the
implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.Having someone that you can communicate with when you have problems or questions is a very important part of a solution like backup and archival.
To read more about how BRU specifically differentiates itself from ALL other solutions, I ask you to take a look at this white paper for a bit more info into why a properly engineered and designed backup and archival solution is important for protecting your data:
Tim
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Tim Jones
CTO – TOLIS Group, Inc.
https://www.tolisgroup.com
BRU … because it’s the RESTORE that matters! -
Hi Malcolm,
BRU Producer’s Edition (and server, and workstation, and …) have all been spanning tape since 1985. This is the difference between an app that treats tape like tape and one that tries to pretend that a tape is a disk.
Once I can get our ducks in a row for the open beta, you can rest assured that BRU PE for Windows will span tapes and allow you to backup/archive 100’s of TBs in a single, multi-tape job (not that I would recommend that as a general workflow … ).
Tim
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Tim Jones
CTO – TOLIS Group, Inc.
https://www.tolisgroup.com
BRU … because it’s the RESTORE that matters! -
Hi Malcolm,
Have you contacted our sales team? They would probably have a better idea of our release plans than the folks here on the Cow ???? . Well, maybe except me.
Seriously though, now that MS has sorted the tape layer so that a regular user can use it without needing to be running Windows Server, we’ve made great progress in getting BRU PE ready for Windows AND Linux. To give you an idea, here’s what the app will look like on all three platforms (you didn’t hear this from me ???? ):
As long as the controlled betas continue as they have, we are pushing for a FeBRUary (see what I did there) launch.
BTW – don’t tell anyone else …
Tim
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Tim Jones
CTO – TOLIS Group, Inc.
https://www.tolisgroup.com
BRU … because it’s the RESTORE that matters! -
Bob was right about the other issues and requiring that you purchase a support plan. For our team to help you troubleshoot issues on your Mac would require that. We have always published that when you purchase one of our software solutions, you get 30 days of support from the invoice date if you don’t also purchase the extended support plan. It’s just like Apple Care – if you buy a new Mac without Apple Care, you get 90 days of software support. After that, you have to pay for software support. So, I’m not contradicting his statement, he was telling you what he is supposed to tell you for your base problem. Bob is in Sales, so he’s not a proper contact for technical questions. This is why we have a separate support team.
As to why BRU PE stopped working, I’ll say again – if BRU PE was working and then magically (your word) stopped working on your 10.11 system, and you didn’t change BRU PE, then what did change? If BRU PE didn’t change and you started having problems, doesn’t it make sense that something else on your system changed? There is no way for us to know what Apple’s thinking or what will be required of us in their next release. If that were possible, the entire Apple universe would be a better place.
The issue with the Import Tool is a very different situation. Even though Apple’s security fix and implementation changes caused the problem that you have witnessed, we did resolve it within our software and that update is being made available to all BRU PE users – regardless of their support status. I see in our support records that Mike responded to you today and provided you with the updated version of the Import Tool that now takes into account the myriad different file location scenarios caused by Apple’s changes. As I mentioned, we continue to support Mac OS users back to 10.6.8 (of which we still have quite a number).
All that I can say about our support process is that it has been our policy since 1987 and your reseller recommended that you include support as part of your purchase back in 2010 – which you declined. You then purchased support in 2012 for 2012-2013, but only to get the 3.x update. You have been aware of our policy since you started using the product, but you’ve not purchased extended support since then and used every possible end-around on our policy that you could to get help – including public forums that are not TOLIS Group support vehicles.
Tim
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Tim Jones
CTO – TOLIS Group, Inc.
https://www.tolisgroup.com
BRU … because it’s the RESTORE that matters! -
Jim,
If BRU PE was working and then “magically” stopped working, BRU didn’t change, so guess what … something on your system did. In this case, our product isn’t defective, and that’s not a bogus error message (not as autocorrect “fixed” it for you) – Apple keeps changing the rules on how vendors must install non-App Store applications. We try to keep things sorted, but quite often, the fact that we continue to support Mac OS all the way back to 10.6.8 causes “disagreements” with Apple’s decisions. What you have run into is one such situation.
$279 ($251 if you renew before your current support expires) for support and a year of upgrades is far from “ransom”, so I’m a bit dismayed at your attitude with this. Also, I checked with Kayleigh and she shows no record of you having contacted the support team in at least the last 6 months. And, as a BRU PE user since 2010, you know how our support structure works.
Finally, if you HAD contacted support, we would have helped you with such an issue even if your support was expired.
These types of hit and run posts don’t help either of us – it doesn’t solve your problem and it doesn’t identify an issue to us that isn’t showing up for very many people.
If you send an email to the tolistechs at tolisgroup dot com address, the team will provide you with a fix for the issue that Apple’s latest security updates for 10.12/10.13 has caused.
Tim
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Tim Jones
CTO – TOLIS Group, Inc.
https://www.tolisgroup.com
BRU … because it’s the RESTORE that matters! -
Hi Jon,
Have you given thought as to why you want LTO-7? LTO-6 is still the sweet spot in drive sales and will cost you around $600-$800 less than LTO-7.
You need everything in our package to make this work. The drive, HBA, Cables, software, and media. Our solution provides all of that right out of the box.
So, if you’ve found an external tape drive, you also need as a minimum:
SAS HBA – $400
Software – $599
SAS Cable – $59
Media – $30
Cleaning Cart – $55If you’ve found a gray-market internal drive, you also need to add a chassis (if you can find one) for around $300.
Add that $1,143 or $1,443 to your found drive price and compare it to our bundle price.
Tim
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Tim Jones
CTO – TOLIS Group, Inc.
https://www.tolisgroup.com
BRU … because it’s the RESTORE that matters! -
If you MUST use LTFS – please stay with 10.12.6.
BRU, OTOH, is fine with 10.13.
Tim
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Tim Jones
CTO – TOLIS Group, Inc.
https://www.tolisgroup.com
BRU … because it’s the RESTORE that matters! -
Have you disabled SpotLight and Timemachine on the drive? Also, have you verified that you’re using the cifs:// protocol instead of the smb:// protocol? Apple’s SMB2 protocol is problematic – especially when dealing for permissions and metadata which something that AJA and Black Magic Disk Speed Test don’t do when checking speed.
Tim
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Tim Jones
CTO – TOLIS Group, Inc.
https://www.tolisgroup.com
BRU … because it’s the RESTORE that matters! -
In case you see this and look for NEO Finder for your own use, the website is https://www.cdfinder.de, not cdwinder.de ☺
Oh, and NEO Finder also imports BRU PE catalogs.
Tim
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Tim Jones
CTO – TOLIS Group, Inc.
https://www.tolisgroup.com
BRU … because it’s the RESTORE that matters!
