5 ms·

Interesting read, as with most of ben's blog.. And yeah, buffering is definitively required to get acceptable speed out of tape tech. If you want a LTO Tape so

Interesting read, as with most of ben's blog.. And yeah, buffering is definitively required to get acceptable speed out of tape tech. If you want a LTO Tape solution with more bells and whistles you could check out Proxmox Backup Server's tape support: https://pbs.proxmox.com/docs/tape-backup.html https://pbs.proxmox.com/docs/tape-backup.html We also rewrote mt and mtx (for robots/changers) in rust, well the relevant parts: https://pbs.proxmox.com/docs/command-syntax.html#pmt https://pbs.proxmox.com/docs/command-syntax.html#pmt https://pbs.proxmox.com/docs/command-syntax.html#pmtx https://pbs.proxmox.com/docs/command-syntax.html#pmtx The introduction/main feature section of the docs contain more info, if you're interested: https://pbs.proxmox.com/docs/introduction.html https://pbs.proxmox.com/docs/introduction.html If you have your non-Linux workload contained in VMs and maybe even already use Proxmox VE for that it's really covering safe and painless self-hosted backup needs. Disclaimer: I work there, but our projects are 100% open source, available under the AGPLv3: https://git.proxmox.com/ https://git.proxmox.com/

Brian-Puccio 5y ago
The docs seem to indicate that if you have a directory structure (say over NFS share) you want to backup to tape, you must first back it up to a datastore (read: local storage on the PBS), that you cannot backup the files straight from a directory structure you must first store them locally in the datastore?
- tlamponi 5y ago
  Yes, normally tape is a second level backup for the worst case and long term archival. Tapes normally are not kept on site, to ensure that even a destruction of the office/datacenter/... like, for example, a fire does not make one lose all data. With PBS this also allows to leverage the whole thing in a more flexible, efficient and powerful manner, as one can do tape-backups async, the deduplication layer can be used so that subsequent backups only need to add the delta of new backup chunks from the content addressable storage (note, the backups themself are still full backups, and one can configure a schedule for when a new media set needs to be created), besides that backing up file-level to tape is normally pretty slow compared to writing out big chunks that are ordered by physical disk location.
aperrien 5y ago
That is really impressive! Are the Proxmox tape utilities separate from Proxmox itself? I have a Synology NAS that I'd like to back up to tape. I actually have a tape library, but I haven't seen anything that looks like a simple solution for this until now.
- tlamponi 5y ago
  Well, the CLI tools are not really couple to Proxmox Backup Server and could be built for most somewhat modern Linux distros, quite possibly also other *nix like systems. The whole tape management is in the common PBS API, so that'd be a bit harder to port but not impossible. For example, I made some effort to get all compile on AARCH64 (arm) and while we do not officially support that currently there are some community members that run it just fine. So, maybe, but could require a bit more hands-on approach. If you run into trouble you could post in the community forum (<https://forum.proxmox.com https://forum.proxmox.com>).
azalemeth 5y ago
Do you run a service where I can give you data and reasonable money, and you store it on tapes for me? Low cost cloud storage prices seem very distant from this, because presumably it's usually spinning rust and not tapes that are doing the storage. I'd be into a cheaper, larger storage service where this was offered.
- Johnny555 5y ago
  What is reasonable money? AWS Glacier Deep Archive is around $1/TB/month. Since it includes Multi-AZ replication for "free", you'd have to store multiple tapes in multiple facilities to get the same durability with tapes. Retrieval costs are additional of course, and depend on how quickly you need access to the data, but if you just want to store data long term in case of disaster, $1/TB for multi-AZ replicated data seems like pretty reasonable pricing. LTO-6 tapes hold 2.5TB of data (uncompressed), assuming you store 2 for redundancy, you'd need to find a place that will store them for $1.25/tape/month to break even, plus you're paying $25 for the tape itself, so over 3 years, that's almost another $1/month/tape. Plus the tape drive itself is around $1500. You can use newer tape technology for better economies of scale, but your buy-in cost is higher due to the higher price of the tape drive, so you'd need a pretty high volume of data to break even.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - terafo 5y ago
    Glacier cost in the cheapest region is 3.6$/TB/month. Plus at least 50$ to download that terabyte once it's needed(if hardware that you're backing up is not in AWS), and I don't even factor in retrieval costs. You can get HDD storage cheaper than this(twice as cheap with some providers) if you are willing to use dedicated servers. And they come with unlimited traffic. And you can use hardware there for something. Glacier is expensive AF.
    - Johnny555 5y ago
      S3 Glacier Deep Archive is the closest equivalent to off site tape storage. From their pricing page: S3 Glacier Deep Archive - For long-term data archiving that is accessed once or twice in a year and can be restored within 12 hours - us-east-2 (Ohio) All Storage / Month $0.00099 per GB https://aws.amazon.com/s3/pricing/ https://aws.amazon.com/s3/pricing/

Brian-Puccio 5y ago

The docs seem to indicate that if you have a directory structure (say over NFS share) you want to backup to tape, you must first back it up to a datastore (read: local storage on the PBS), that you cannot backup the files straight from a directory structure you must first store them locally in the datastore?

tlamponi 5y ago
Yes, normally tape is a second level backup for the worst case and long term archival. Tapes normally are not kept on site, to ensure that even a destruction of the office/datacenter/... like, for example, a fire does not make one lose all data. With PBS this also allows to leverage the whole thing in a more flexible, efficient and powerful manner, as one can do tape-backups async, the deduplication layer can be used so that subsequent backups only need to add the delta of new backup chunks from the content addressable storage (note, the backups themself are still full backups, and one can configure a schedule for when a new media set needs to be created), besides that backing up file-level to tape is normally pretty slow compared to writing out big chunks that are ordered by physical disk location.

aperrien 5y ago

That is really impressive! Are the Proxmox tape utilities separate from Proxmox itself? I have a Synology NAS that I'd like to back up to tape. I actually have a tape library, but I haven't seen anything that looks like a simple solution for this until now.

tlamponi 5y ago
Well, the CLI tools are not really couple to Proxmox Backup Server and could be built for most somewhat modern Linux distros, quite possibly also other *nix like systems. The whole tape management is in the common PBS API, so that'd be a bit harder to port but not impossible. For example, I made some effort to get all compile on AARCH64 (arm) and while we do not officially support that currently there are some community members that run it just fine. So, maybe, but could require a bit more hands-on approach. If you run into trouble you could post in the community forum (<https://forum.proxmox.com https://forum.proxmox.com>).

azalemeth 5y ago

Do you run a service where I can give you data and reasonable money, and you store it on tapes for me? Low cost cloud storage prices seem very distant from this, because presumably it's usually spinning rust and not tapes that are doing the storage. I'd be into a cheaper, larger storage service where this was offered.

Johnny555 5y ago
What is reasonable money? AWS Glacier Deep Archive is around $1/TB/month. Since it includes Multi-AZ replication for "free", you'd have to store multiple tapes in multiple facilities to get the same durability with tapes. Retrieval costs are additional of course, and depend on how quickly you need access to the data, but if you just want to store data long term in case of disaster, $1/TB for multi-AZ replicated data seems like pretty reasonable pricing. LTO-6 tapes hold 2.5TB of data (uncompressed), assuming you store 2 for redundancy, you'd need to find a place that will store them for $1.25/tape/month to break even, plus you're paying $25 for the tape itself, so over 3 years, that's almost another $1/month/tape. Plus the tape drive itself is around $1500. You can use newer tape technology for better economies of scale, but your buy-in cost is higher due to the higher price of the tape drive, so you'd need a pretty high volume of data to break even.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- terafo 5y ago
  Glacier cost in the cheapest region is 3.6$/TB/month. Plus at least 50$ to download that terabyte once it's needed(if hardware that you're backing up is not in AWS), and I don't even factor in retrieval costs. You can get HDD storage cheaper than this(twice as cheap with some providers) if you are willing to use dedicated servers. And they come with unlimited traffic. And you can use hardware there for something. Glacier is expensive AF.
  - Johnny555 5y ago
    S3 Glacier Deep Archive is the closest equivalent to off site tape storage. From their pricing page: S3 Glacier Deep Archive - For long-term data archiving that is accessed once or twice in a year and can be restored within 12 hours - us-east-2 (Ohio) All Storage / Month $0.00099 per GB https://aws.amazon.com/s3/pricing/ https://aws.amazon.com/s3/pricing/