ELI5 on LTO drives.

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TLN

Active Member
Feb 26, 2016
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Hi all.

I'm considering geting LTO drive for backups of my own stuff. Seems like a better idea, compared to big number of spinners.
Are there any issues or know-hows I need to know prior to buying one?
I assume it can read two get before and write 1 gen before, so LTO-5 drive can read/write LTO-5 and LTO-4 an can read from LTO-3 tape, right?

I got server with SAS Mini-HD port, and I see same thing on back of the drive (external, internal). Are there any potential vendor locks I should be aware? It sounds too good to be true to be honest.
 

ari2asem

Active Member
Dec 26, 2018
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why lto ??
why not 8TB qlc ssd ?? cheaper, faster and better for offline / cold storage than lto.

i have used lto-6 for short time...my experience ?? better use big ssd for cold storage
 

BoredSysadmin

Not affiliated with Maxell
Mar 2, 2019
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Tapes - too good to be true? haha. Tapes could only do sequential reads/writes well - any seek process is counted not in ms but in seconds and sometimes minutes. Tapes do fail much more often than hard drives. Tape drives and libraries are both notoriously unreliable due to the high amount of moving parts (usually made from plastics to cut costs)
Don't make assumptions about the back-compatibility of LTO drives. Tape Drive, Media Compatibility Matrix | Tandberg Data

Good news - there aren't many vendor locks to be aware of, except maybe changing tape drives in the library. Tapes themselves are interchangeable as long as right format/type.
 

NateS

Active Member
Apr 19, 2021
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Sacramento, CA, US
why lto ??
why not 8TB qlc ssd ?? cheaper, faster and better for offline / cold storage than lto.

i have used lto-6 for short time...my experience ?? better use big ssd for cold storage
No, no no no no, you really don't want to use QLC SSDs for cold storage. Their powered off data retention time is far too low for that to be a good option. Note that the JEDEC standard for SSDs is that client drives only need to retain data for 1 year when stored at 30C, and enterprise drives only need to retain for 3 months when stored at 40C. Granted those are minimum specs, and some drives probably do far better, but I doubt any QLC drives are among them.

Tape, on the other hand, is one of the few mediums where you can write it today and reasonably expect read it back 30 years later without data corruption. And while tape drives may be more expensive than a QLC SSD, the tape itself is far cheaper, and if you amortize the cost of the machine over enough tapes, the whole setup will be a lot cheaper than an equivalent capacity of SSDs or even HDDs. IMO tape is basically the ideal storage mechanism for any data you're pretty sure you'll never need again, but you still need to keep, either because you're legally required to for some number of years, or there's a small chance you might need it again someday (e.g. a third level backup).

Tapes - too good to be true? haha. Tapes could only do sequential reads/writes well - any seek process is counted not in ms but in seconds and sometimes minutes. Tapes do fail much more often than hard drives. Tape drives and libraries are both notoriously unreliable due to the high amount of moving parts (usually made from plastics to cut costs)
Don't make assumptions about the back-compatibility of LTO drives. Tape Drive, Media Compatibility Matrix | Tandberg Data

Good news - there aren't many vendor locks to be aware of, except maybe changing tape drives in the library. Tapes themselves are interchangeable as long as right format/type.
Agreed that tape is slow for anything that's not sequential, but since backups are usually sequential, that's often fine. And if you need to do random access with data on a tape, it's probably best to just sequentially copy the whole tape to some other storage medium and do the random access there.

And while tape drives may be unreliable, the tape itself is very reliable, and you can replace the drive without losing any data stored on the tapes.
 

TLN

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Feb 26, 2016
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why lto ??
why not 8TB qlc ssd ?? cheaper, faster and better for offline / cold storage than lto.

i have used lto-6 for short time...my experience ?? better use big ssd for cold storage
Well, I currently have big SSD for my storage and I'm thinking about doing better backups. Tape seems reasonable: I don't need speed and it can be linear write tbh.
 
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amalurk

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Dec 16, 2016
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Personally, I find having an offsite backup more comforting than having a local backup because local data is already mirrored at least. Depending on your needs it could be as simple as an Odroid HC2 or HC4 at another reliable location and rsync/vpn/wire guard or similar.
 

TLN

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Feb 26, 2016
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Personally, I find having an offsite backup more comforting than having a local backup because local data is already mirrored at least. Depending on your needs it could be as simple as an Odroid HC2 or HC4 at another reliable location and rsync/vpn/wire guard or similar.
I haven't said that tapes will be on-site. LTO-6 tapes are what, $20 per 6.5Tb? Outside of initial investment, seems reasonable.
 

Stephan

Well-Known Member
Apr 21, 2017
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LTO-5 should be reasonably cheap by now. Question is, what OS and what tape software?

Older tried and true software was Backup Exec 2010 R3 SP4 before Symantec really messed things up in that product line. Should work up until Server 2008. But will everything be on that server that needs backing up? Backing up shares have always been an issue here. Also Server 2008, EOL big time.

More expensive... Veeam Enterprise. Top notch tape and tape library support. Can also just take a share or directory and write that to tape.

Personally I am using Bareos under Linux for many years now. I tweaked it heavily though. Like using scripts pre/post to turn on/off power to the relevant drive through a USB interface with relays (drilled a hole into the slot of a 2k USD drive). To control the noise those drives make. And because at least external IBM drives will not switch on automatically when power is applied, IBM is too cool for that. Or maybe a design choice and necessity, I don't know. Or e.g. I am using a script snippet to create and delete ZFS snapshots relevant to the backup set, to get nice and clean consistent backups. Also not using the internal scheduler but using a systemd timer that fires off two jobs, the main job itself and after that a job that writes the current Postgresql database to tape as well, together will all currently employed config files and build instructions for the package on Arch. Takes a few days to get everything going good I'd say, but weeks and a soldering iron to tweak it to perfection.

If you mount the drive into a 5.25" slot of a PC/server case, make sure to have really really good and proper ventilation in that case. As in a case that was actually designed for taking such a drive and one that will draw enough air through the front to cool the bottom plate properly. Because that's where a bunch of hot chips sit that need proper cooling. That's why I used external cases, easier and proper cooling.
 

amalurk

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Dec 16, 2016
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I haven't said that tapes will be on-site. LTO-6 tapes are what, $20 per 6.5Tb? Outside of initial investment, seems reasonable.
I guess what I was saying is tape seems like so much more work and expense unless you have a ton of data like 100s of TB or more.
 

BoredSysadmin

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Mar 2, 2019
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I haven't said that tapes will be on-site. LTO-6 tapes are what, $20 per 6.5Tb? Outside of initial investment, seems reasonable.
2.5TB uncompressed, don’t expect any compression storing any media content.

as for the comment above of tapes being very reliable, let’s agree to disagree. Like anything else they will be reliable only if you put it up on shelf and never touch it. If you keep rewriting data on it , tapes will fail sooner than you think.

writing data on tapes is indeed sequential but again unless you write in parallel to multiple drives , it’s usually slow.

ssds aren’t the answer obviously , but why not m-disk ?
 

NateS

Active Member
Apr 19, 2021
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Sacramento, CA, US
as for the comment above of tapes being very reliable, let’s agree to disagree. Like anything else they will be reliable only if you put it up on shelf and never touch it. If you keep rewriting data on it , tapes will fail sooner than you think.
Ah that I do agree with actually; I was meaning that unlike HDDs and SSDs, there's nothing in a tape that will "go bad" if it's just sitting in cold storage like in OP's use case. How many times you can rewrite a tape is a separate issue, similar to SSD write endurance. And In some cases (e.g. data you're legally required to store for 10 years), it makes sense to use a new tape for each backup, so rewritability isn't always important.
 

TLN

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Feb 26, 2016
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as for the comment above of tapes being very reliable, let’s agree to disagree. Like anything else they will be reliable only if you put it up on shelf and never touch it. If you keep rewriting data on it , tapes will fail sooner than you think.
Well, this is my planned use, if I decide to go that way. Get multiple tapes, cycle through em, do backups from time to time. Store in a cool dry place :)