We use LTO-5 with SL6 with no problems. We just told our vendor (IBM in this case) what drives we wanted to use, and they provided a server with the appropriate ports on the back. It's a basic SAS card as far as I can tell with external SAS connectors.

LTO-5 is definitely the way to go, you can use LTO-4 tapes which you can get cheap, or slightly more expensive (but coming down in price) LTO-5 tapes for more density.

--
James Pulver
LEPP Computer Group
Cornell University


-----Original Message-----
From: [log in to unmask] [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Ken Teh
Sent: Monday, June 18, 2012 10:38 AM
To: scientific-linux-users
Subject: LTO tape drives

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!