LTO2 gone End of Life?!

With SAS drives being up to 600GB and SATA drives are up to 2TB, a 200GB tape isn't enough anymore.

DAT72 allows for small backups of the most critical data on a single server, but to back up multiple servers, the common choices seem to be LTO-3 (400GB native per tape) or LTO-4 (800GB native per tape).

Yes, hard disk capacities may have rocketed beyond requirments but in our experience many if not most small business (5 to 25 users) just don't need 600GB of tape space. 200GB is plenty for now and the next 5 years.

The maths: Company A with Dat 72 currently backing up 35 GB of data daily. Server has reached 5 years old so looking to replace server and tape drive. Company generates approx 500MB email/files a month.  Over the anticipated 5 year lifecycle of the new server that works out as 0.5GB * 12 Months * 5 Years = 30GB. So total backup requirment of 75GB at the end of 5 years. Right in the comfort zone for LTO 2.

At an extra £600 ~ (inc tapes) LTO3 just can't deliver any value to these business.

Thanks for your reply.

I think you have made a good example of the unnecessary complications that Dell are forcing into the Small Business market by dropping a perfrectly useful (though perhaps less profitable) product from their storage range.

HP have of course conitinued to offer LTO2, making HP the obvious choice for Server Hardware for Small Businesses.

If your backup needs are about 30GB over a period of 5 years, DAT72 is more than enough. If it's the 75GB you mention, just use 2 tapes. As I don't expect someone to want to swap a tape out in the middle of the night, you can either use 2 tape drives, or split the (less crucial) jobs for every other day so you can swap the tape during the day.

It wouldn't surprise me if HP were to discontinue LTO-2 pretty soon as well though, so buy it while you can.

Thanks again. I called HP Server  sales and they reckon 2011 is EOL for LTO2. Seems that Dell are going it alone on this one.