RDX8000 with Firestreamer

The technical support forum for Firestreamer (the virtual tape library).
Locked
TimGuyUK
Posts: 2
Joined: 21 Jun 2013, 15:05

Post by TimGuyUK »

Anyone used one of these 8 bay RDXs with Firestreamer? I need to offer an offsite solution with a disc based media for around 20Tb.

Im thinking that usability will be difficult loading drive sets into different slots, etc and I still haven't quite got my head around spanning of multiple drives?

Any thoughts for feed back?

Thanks

Tim Guy
TimGuyUK
Posts: 2
Joined: 21 Jun 2013, 15:05

Post by TimGuyUK »

Actually reading more into it, and not wanting to take anything way from Fire streamer, it does run in LTO mode where the drives becomes slots in a LTO compatible drive.

Id still be interested in anyone's hands on experience in tape or jbod mode.

Tim
jsf
Cristalink Support
Posts: 300
Joined: 29 Aug 2010, 09:03

Post by jsf »

The best approach would be using RDX in "drive media mode", one tape per disk. You could probably automate the whole process with a script. However, you need to thoroughly test this scenario as the drivers that come with the hardware are usually not of a high quality, so you may (or may not) experience lock-ups and crashes in those drivers.

You may want to check this post on RDX.

>>, etc and I still haven't quite got my head around spanning of multiple drives?

DPM automatically spans across tapes.

>>Im thinking that usability will be difficult loading drive sets into different slots

I am not sure what you meant, sorry.

The question is, what is the benefit of using RDX? Generally, it would be more simple, cheaper and reliable to use generic external USB or eSATA drives in file media mode. It can be automated with a script, and you can easily access your tapes (.fsrm files) if you want to back up them to the cloud or similar.
Best regards,
John Smith
Cristalink Support
Locked