Re: Permanent backups to tape? Do you have a Tape Unit that can read those old tapes?

All tapes are kept at Iron Mountain. You keep a copy at your desk and no
one gives a rip - your tail.
When we swap out tape drives we recall all tapes, in batches. Dupe them
to current media. Send them back to Iron Mountain. Clear the old ones
and trade them in.
Dupes are done within BRMS so it can keep track of restore methodologies.
Except for the really old tapes that are pre BRMS. Those are duped
outside of BRMS.

Yes, I would use the most current tape for the tape drive you have. We're
only upgrading to LTO4 drives. Much cheaper than 5's and the jump in
performance and capacity between 3&4 was much more significant that the
jump between 4&5.

Keep in mind where you'd restore them also. Our Mimix machine is using
LTO3 drives and our primary is using LTO4 drives. We only have LTO3 tapes
until we upgrade the Mimix machine.

We have around 250 tapes for our i's and about 100 for TSM.

However, I've heard of locations with over 1000 tapes tied up for TSM.


Rob Berendt