Re: Tape drive Reccommendation needed

From: Thomas T <T_at_T>
Date: Tue, 25 Nov 2003 11:14:50 -0500
Message-ID: <3fc37ffd$1@rutgers.edu>

"pheonix1t" <dangeru98dousdt_at_ATsbcglobal.DOTnet> wrote in message news:pn6wb.38$wx2.50540667_at_newssvr11.news.prodigy.com...
> charlie cs wrote:
> > As an application dba, I seldom deal with backup and restore. Our SA is
> > responsible for that. And I will take over for recovery after the
datafile
> > is restored.
> >
> > I have a database at home. If I want to buy a cheap tape drive, just
for
> > practice purpose, which one would you recommend?
> >
> > What I need is, can work with RMAN, not very expensive.
> >
> > Thanks for your help.
> >
> >
> i'd suggest a scsi DDS2 or DDS3. Sony or HP are good. They're about
> 12-24GB storage. That's a nice starting size for a practice PC.
> They have smaller ones....it all depends on how much data you want to
> backup.

Here's a different suggestion- why bother with a tape? You said the system administrator will be putting the file out there for you to work with, so I don't see any reason to have a tape at all. In fact, even if you wanted a cheap tape drive for the "experience" of working with a tape, chances are, it's not going to help you out at all when you go work on a "real" tape system (hardware -and- software!) at your company. So here's an alternative solution- buy one of those external USB hard drives. That way you could get 150 or so GB of storage for about the same price. And the only "Difference" will be that you'd create folders on that drive such as:

Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday

Friday-10-03-2003
Friday-10-10-2003
Friday-10-17-2003
Friday-10-24-2003

...etc...

You could write scripts to automate the creation (and deletion, say, after 2 months) of the Friday directories. This would simulate a tape drive set to "overwrite" each Friday tape with the current day. Don't forget your script to keep the archivelog storage area clean of "outdated" files (such as, storing for only 1 month).

Since RMAN works with files, and since your SysAdmin would just be restoring those files to disk anyway, all you're "missing out on" is flipping the tape each day. You'll be able to get more practice in, since you won't be waiting for a tape (even with expensive hardware, they're still slow compared to hard drives) to restore a file to disk. If you do this, get a USB 2.0 card, and buy a USB 2.0 drive- preferably one of the newer 7200 rpm units- to minimize your "wait" time. Unless, of course, you want to simulate waiting for a tape :)

In fact... if you're using Win2k as your server, you could use the built-in backup software (programmed by the Veritas/BackupExec guys) and set up scripts to back your system up to a file on that USB drive. But it sounds like you just want to work with RMAN, not the o/s itself, so I'd say just set up scripts to copy files.

-Thomas Received on Tue Nov 25 2003 - 10:14:50 CST