WORM tapes

[j-man]

Good evening all,

We have a NAS that one of our departments stores all past jobs but we were quickly running out of space so we got a DAT autoloader so we could back up the data and then remove everything from the NAS and restore files as needed.

We are now averaging 7 to 10 restores daily and the first two tapes have now passed their life expectancy and need to be replaced. Replacing them will be a PITA because I'll need to restore the entire archive onto the NAS, replace the two tapes (tapes 3 and 4 have almost no mounts) and then backup the archive to tape... and then repeat three months from now or even less because we all know that storage needs only increase. Which means that eventually, I wont have enough room on the NAS to restore the archive.

That brings me to WORM. Will that allow us the ability to archive once and then restore from that media (numerous times a week) without running into the end of life issues with regular tapes?

My concern is that I buy this solution and then three months from now I'm running around in a panic trying to figure out how to get the archive off tape just to back it all up again on a fresh tape.

Eventually, I'll have the $$$ to get a nice 6+ TB solution but for the next year, I've got to bubblegum and band-aid this problem

Any help will be greatly appreciated

[spydermanpat]

This site was posted by Kodiak, maybe it will help you. http://www.serverelements.com/index.php

Pat

[NooNoo]

j-man, I am concerned that you are solving the wrong problem.

7-10 restores a day is not what backup/restore was designed for. You post seems to say that you are short of storage... NAS allows you to add storage. Hard drive storage is very very cheap now. What is stopping you adding more storage to remove the need for all these restores apart from money? Spending money on another backup solution won't help you buy more storage.

If your business needs more storage, then a loan would be more effective?