I agree that two (or more, we use five) tape drives are better than one;
however, rather than a sequential backup (still takes as long) or a parallel
backup (too complex when a restore is required) why not two separate,
independent, backup jobs?

We actually do five simultaneous backups to five tape drives. The obvious
advantage this has over a sequential backup is the time factor. The obvious
advantage over a parallel backup is ease of restore. Perhaps less obvious,
since the backups are independent, if one fails for any reason, we still
have a good backup of 4/5's of our system

The downside to this scheme is you have to manually determine how to split
your system and periodically monitor how much is backed up by each process;
however, it has served us well for many years and once set up requires only
minimal attention.

John Burke

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Doug Werth [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
> Sent: Tuesday, November 21, 2000 12:03 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: [HP3000-L] Turbostore question
>
>
> Al,
>
> As an alternative to alerting your operators to the tape
> request you could
> add another tape drive to your system and have TurboStore run
> a "sequential"
> backup. This means your operator would mount tapes in both drives and
> TurboStore would automatically begin writing to the second
> tape drive when
> the first tape filled up.
>
> The syntax would be:
>
> :file tape1;dev=7
> :file tape2;dev=8
> :store /; ;show=long;progress;directory;storeset=(*tape1,*tape2)
>
> You can also run the backup to the tapes in parallel, writing
> to both tapes
> simultaneously, but it needlessly introduces complexity to
> restoring files,
> unless backup performance is a serious issue for you.
>
> An added benefit to the second tape device is that it gives
> you an option to
> drop back to one device when one of the drives fails,
> enabling you to run a
> backup instead of waiting for a hardware repair.
>
> Doug.
>
> Doug Werth                             Beechglen Development Inc.
> [log in to unmask]                               Cincinnati, Ohio
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Nizzardini, Al" <[log in to unmask]>
> To: <[log in to unmask]>
> Sent: Tuesday, November 21, 2000 12:49 PM
> Subject: Turbostore question
>
>
> > We are using turbostore to perform our daily backups. The backup now
> > requiring additional tape mounts. Is there a way to
> intercept the request
> > that goes to the console and send it to everyone log on as op.prod?
> >
> > TIA,
> >
> > Al Nizzardini
>