My current arrangement for backup is Dell PowerVault 122T SDLT and Backup Exec 10 on Windows 2000 Server, at least at one place.

The only thing which I can say about it is … unreliable.

Tape library has mechanical problems, build in tape drive has tape errors more often than 3 girls combined periods. And it’s apparently almost brand new, in 3 years history, it was replaced twice, last time 3 months ago …

Backup software looses it’s agents or communication with media part of it’s self at least once a week.

The best part is that we do not change much, backup schedules and selections changed maybe 2 times in 3 years. Tape drive always gets good tapes and a new set every month. So it should just work … but is doesn’t.

I’ve even tried to use it with a HP D2D Virtual Tape library, but sodding software does not handle iSCSI well enough to actually make it usable.

Why someone can’t make a solution which just works and works and works for years, why it has to become shit after so short period of time ?

I wrote about it because I had to spend 2h, yesterday, trying to get this shit to run.