[Info-vax] Special deals on Tape Drives

[Grant Taylor]

On 3/5/22 4:53 PM, Bill Gunshannon wrote:
> How would I perform backups and test them if I don't even know where, 
> physically, the system I am running on is?  If I did, would they even 
> let me in the door, much less into the data center?

Backups can mean a LOT of different things.  Including quiescing a 
database and copying it included among them.  Do you /need/ to know 
where system A is located to copy files from system A to system B?  I 
don't think so.

I don't know how much support OpenVMS has for iSCSI attached tape 
drives.  But I expect that OpenVMS can support a fibre channel attached 
tape drive.  Both iSCSI and fibre channel can be extended a LONG 
distance.  Said long distance can even be over a data center 
interconnection.  Thus the OpenVMS system in the cloud can use an iSCSI 
/ fibre channel attach tape drive that's sitting on your desk.  Thus you 
can back up to tapes in your office.  Thereby fulfilling two things, 
backups and having them be offsite.

I similarly expect that you can set up volume shadowing between an 
OpenVMS system in the cloud and another OpenVMS system in your office.

Create a cluster that spans multiple sites, one site in the cloud and 
another site local to your office, and have a local physical machine 
perform backups for the other nodes to a SCSI attached tape drive.

> Are you saying backups have to be done over the Internet to tapes 
> located in my office?

They don't have to be.  But I believe they certainly could be.

> After all, the reason for going to The Cloud was to get out of the 
> data center business.

That's one reason to go to the cloud.  There are others.

> Even in a data center as small as mine was at the University doing 
> a complete backup (usually done once a month) over the network could 
> take a more than a day.  That can't be right.

Why can't it be right?

I back up my multiple Linux cloud systems to a server in my house each 
and every night via automated jobs that I monitor.

> Still don't see the advantage of The Cloud.

In my (not so) humble opinion, "the cloud" is just another data center, 
especially if you are responsible for the Operating System.

The location of the data has nothing to do with ensuring that it is 
backed up.

Note:  There is a big difference in ensuring that it is backed up and 
actually doing the backup yourself.  IT directors quite likely don't do 
the backups themselves, but they employ people to do it for them.

As others have stated, there are many different types of clouds.  Some 
offer application level services, e.g. "email" or "DNS".  Others offer 
(virtual) machines that you install and manage an operating system in. 
Different levels of access mean different levels of responsibility.

There are also security implications with having cloud providers be 
responsible for the backups in that they need access to the data to be 
able to do the backups.



-- 
Grant. . . .
unix || die