Jukeboxes and mass storage

Ellen "K." Osinski <ellen@hpdmmgv.boi.hp.com> writes (quoting Jonathan Leffler): > >I don't believe many installations can have 50 tape drives > >attached to a single machine (even if networked devices are allowed for). > This is the '90's. Go on, Jonathan, argue ! ;-) > There are more options than just tape devices for > backup media. Some of us do have optical disk autochangers attatched to > the network with 64 media sides available. One of us is typing this by way of a change from trying to repair his 64-side optical disk jukebox software :-/ > Each media side can be mounted > like a file system. I know I can specify one media side as my backup media > in On-Line. Do you really want to do this ? The biggest optical we've been offered is 1.5GB/side, the biggest tape 5GB. The tape's *FAR* cheaper than the optical, and somewhat smaller. Not so fast, maybe, but you seem to pay a very high price for the speed difference. I've seen bigger tapes, at least, but I suspect the ratios don't get much better. (Please correct me as necessary: feel free to send marketing info too !) Could bung the archive on optical when you were in a hurry, then move it off to tape later, I suppose, to minimize the time taken for the archive. Still a bit messy, though. What do you gain by mounting the optical disks, by the way ? I'd have thought you'd find it much better to write to the raw device just the same way you would with a tape. Saves all that kernel-buffering. Or don't you get the choice ? > But I do not believe On-Line will automatically mount and > unmount each media side in order to perform unattended backups. No, the hooks don't seem to be there. > Informix needs to acknowledge the existance of optical disk and DAT tape > autochangers and utilize their capabilities. Some hooks for DAT jukes would be a VERY good idea - the DAT jukes are comparatively inexpensive - and the same thing should work for opticals. But as someone else said (sorry, your name's been paged out .. ) you *could* achieve this using something as simple as the "expect" prog with a half-way sensible juke. There's supposed to be a comp.storage (?) group coming up anytime now, which should help a lot with this kind of stuff. Also, has anyone heard of DB backends running on an Auspex server ? Now, *that's* something I'd be interested in. Perhaps I should have a word with Guy Harris ? Amazing, eh, a whole posting with no ESQL/C++ or strcpy()'s !! Apart from that last one ... Cheers - Tony. PS. sizeof(.sig) < sizeof(message-text) __________________________________________________________________________ Tony Heskett th@bnr.co.uk Voice: (+44) 279 402637 BNR, London Road, Harlow, Essex, CM17 9NA Fax: (+44) 279 451434