SLR vs DAT, A No Brainer
Management Assistance, Inc. had always considered itself a "Solution Provider" before anyone else came out with the name. Located just West of Cleveland, Ohio, they served a wide range of manufacturing businesses, government and academic institutions, providing business software consulting as well as hardware/software products and training.
They've always pushed for the most cost-effective solutions for their customer's needs, offering the best bottom-line answer. Recently they got a call from one of their best customers requesting some help for a software upgrade in response Management Assistance started reviewing the options for a new server.
Grafton-Midview Public Library has about 25 systems operating on an NT server system. They had been using an 8GB DAT drive to rotate around the computers on the network in order to back up all the systems at least once per week, and the database nightly. Between the limited backup window, tape speed and the tape capacity, it just wasn't possible to backup all of they systems as often as everyone wanted, as either the tape or the time ran out each night.
Management Assistance, Inc. is an Intel IPD, Microsoft Solution Provider and OEM, so building the server was the most logical plan. They selected a dual processor 800, 512MB RAM, RAID5 array, and other components, based on Intel's Real Server Board L440GX Server motherboard and system chassis. The system seemed to cook, until it was configured and ready for backup. As part of the evaluation, Management Assistance selected a new 40GB DAT drive that offered fast processing power and the ability to re-use some of their older tapes on selected backups. The expectation was that the new drive would provide up to 5 times more capacity each night in storage, and everything would be backed up on a better rotation scheme. Costs were reasonable; the SCSI card was already installed for the disks, so it looked like the best solution.
However…
The DAT drive was only getting about 150MB per minute (based on the approximation that shows on Veritas Backup Exec) on the speed, about 3 times the speed of the old drive, but not as fast as expected. Management Assistance had installed Tandberg Data drives before and knew that they easily performed at that speed. To insure that there was nothing technically wrong with the drive, they called
the DAT drive support team and reviewed the setup. All seemed correct according to the support team, they did suggest that another tape drive might be installed and to
then check/compare the results.
Fortunately, Management Assistance did have another tape drive to try, but not a DAT. It was a new Tandberg SLR60 30/60GB tape drive. The Tandberg basically ripped up the DAT in terms of performance. The DAT drive had backed up the 13.3GB server in 68 minutes. The Tandberg SLR60 did the same backup in just 28 minutes. Keep in mind, all MA did was shut the server down, replace the DAT with the Tandberg SLR60 and power it back up for a real apples to apples comparison. After checking the drive costs at several distributors, this was a no-brainer. About $200 more for twice the speed and 1/3 more capacity, on a drive system that is more robust to begin with, based on Management Assistance's past experiences with Tandberg Data tape drives. We sent the DAT drive back and left the Tandberg SLR60 in the server.
The customer is happy with the new drive because they have less downtime due to backup problems, and Management Assistance, Inc. is happy because they were able to provide a very cost-effective solution.