[ale] Consensus on best deal for a scsi DAT->10Gig ?

[Keith R. Watson]

At 07:28 PM 11/16/2001 -0500, you wrote:
>Greetings !
>
>Is scsi DAT the most cost competitive backup solution, considering media
>+ drive ?
>
>If not please enlighten me.
>
>If yes, where would you go to acquire such equipment [min: 10Gig]  ?
>
>Appreciatively,
>
>Courtney

Courtney,

Sorry for the delay in posting but I was on vacation. I read the other 
responses to your request and like them have used a variety of 4mm, 8mm, 
DLT, and AIT drives. I ran out of room on the 4mm drive I was using to 
backup my local workstation and decided to get something that could handle 
the 30GB+ of data.

4mm runs out of gas at 20G, proprietary 8mm formats can handle 30GB+ but 
the drives and media are way to expensive. If I thought 8mm is bad on price 
for workstation backup, DLT and AIT are ridiculous. We do use DLT and AIT 
in our enterprise backup system but the cost there is justified.

I eventually found the Ecrix VXA drive. They are fast, cheap (relatively 
speaking), and reliable. Here are some of the particulars:

Model: Ecrix VXA-1

Drive cost: approx. $899 (for internal)
             I got and external on special, direct from Ecrix for $749

Native capacity: 33GB (with V17 tape)

Hardware compression 2:1 (this gives you 66GB of storage depending on the data)

Tape cost for V17: approx. $70

and best of all they are Linux certified.

I have been doing daily backups since 6/2001 and it has worked flawlessly. 
For more info see:

http://www.vxatape.com/


I don't work for Ecrix, I'm just a very happy customer.

keith
-------------

Keith R. Watson                        GTRI/AIST
Systems Support Specialist III         Georgia Tech Research Institute
keith.watson at gtri.gatech.edu           Atlanta, GA  30332-0816
404-894-0836

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