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!