Honestly, just getting e.g. an LSI 9200-8e and one or more 1->4
breakout cables to break out a 4-lane SAS port into 4 single-lane
ports to run to the drives should work fine for LTO-5 drives.

- Rich

On Mon, Jun 18, 2012 at 10:38 AM, Ken Teh <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I need some help and advice with LTO tape drives.  I haven't kept up with
> tape technology for several years now and from a quick google, it appears
> that the only games in town are LTO and DDS.  We do have a single DDS
> deployment and we are looking at replacing it with LTO because of capacity
> limitations.
>
> Some questions:
>
> (1) It appears that LTO-5 is the current technology. But most single drives
> use SAS as an interface.  Again, I am not familiar with SAS.  All I know is
> what the acronym stands for.  Is it a simple matter of buying a SAS card?
>  Will it run out of the box on a SL6.x box?  Any issues with drivers?
>
> (2) I see that LTO-4 is still available.  And a quick google suggests that
> Ultra160 or 320 LVD SCSI is the more common interface for these drives.  I
> have several of the Adaptec 29xxx cards, made available when we transitioned
> to SATA.  Is this viable or would you recommend against using LTO-4?  It
> appears to be about 5 years old.  I think it would be preferable to use
> technology that has at least some life to it but I am not inclined to work
> very hard to make LTO-5 work if it is not well supported on Linux.
>
> We are not looking to do anything fancy.  A single internal drive and a box
> of tapes.  Backups the old fashioned way.
>
> Specific recommendations welcomed.  As in, buy this card, buy this drive!
>
> Thanks!