B2D - External Drives - USB3 or ESATA - What Would You Do?

Ok, we have been using a Dell PV132T tape library for the past 6 years. I think its time to move away from the tapes and move towards external drives.

With that said, I have a 2008R2 64bit server running BE2012.

What technology would you use for the external drives, USB3 or ESata?

I can install whatever card I need, so that is not an issue. The current server only has USB2 ports, so whatever I decide, I will need to install a new interface card. My whole goal is to decrease backup and restore times. Currently it take over 33 hours to perform our Weekly Full backups and I want to see this decrease.

My plan as it sits right now, is to create 4 storage pools (Daily, Weekly, Monthly, Yearly)

Daily - Keep 5 Days of Differential backups (Mon - Fri) (Typically 500g, as I do a full backup of the Exchange and Sharepoint server nightly)

I think I can use 1 3tb drive and get all of my dailys on this one drive. I never (probably should) take the daily tapes offsite)

Weekly - Keep 5 weeks of Full backups (Sat) (Typically 1.7tb)

Thinking (5) 3tb drives and these will be taken off site every Monday

Monthly - Keep 12 Months of Full backups (Last Sat of Every Month) (Typically 1.7tb)

Thinking (12) 3tb drives and these will be taken off site first Monday of every Month

Yearly - Keep 7 Years of Full backups (Last Sat of Dec) (Typically 1.7tb)

Thinking (7) 3tb drives and these will be taken off site first Monday of Jan

Managing Backup Devices

11 Replies

CraigV
Moderator
13 years ago
Hi,

I'd suggest using the technology that gives you the best speed...to my knowledge, USB3 is very fast, so this should be what you look at.

The actual job setup with data retention times looks fine, but at the price you're paying for those drives, does it not make sense to go with a stand-alone LTO4 tape drive? Just asking...

But for your actual question, USB3 is about twice as fast as Esata, which means your backups should run faster as a result of that.

Thanks!
Christopher_Jol
Level 4
13 years ago
Thank you for the feedback. Cost of this amount of drives will be about $4400 ($200 per drive) x 22. That will cover me for 1 year. I had checked on Dell's website the other day and for an LT05 solution with tapes, I was looking at close to $16,000.

In the end, I need something that is faster than what I have now, and something that wont break the bank.
Ken_Putnam
Level 6
13 years ago
eSATA 3.0 is up to 6 Gbit/sec

USB 3.0 is up to 5 Gbit/sec

So not a huge difference in theoretical max. but I've heard of USB 3.0 underperforming for number of reasons

personally, I'd go with eSATA 3.0
teiva-boy
Level 6
13 years ago
eSATA allows for better paralleism for concurrent backup streams.
ZeRoC00L
Level 6
13 years ago
That LTO solution, is that a library, and do you require a library ?

A standalone LTO5 drive is about 2500 euro, add some tapes and a SAS controller and you are ready for 4000 euro.
Christopher_Jol
Level 4
13 years ago
Ya, the LTO solution is a library. We are currently using a 24 tape LTO3 solution (Dell PV132T) with 2 tape drives in it. Once I add 2 drives plus the library and some tapes it becomes very $$$
pkh
Moderator
13 years ago
eSata would be better because there no protocol conversion between the SATA bus and the eSATA device, whereas there is a conversion with the USB device. This conversion takes CPU cycles that is why Firewire performs better than USB. The only drawback with eSATA is that the orginal eSATA specs do not specify any power long the eSATA cable. You have to have an external power source. This is now changed and now eSATAp allows power over the eSATA cable.

To implement eSATA, you don't need to install a card. All you need is spare SATA ports on your motherboard and then you buy eSATA ports which are just sockets mounted on a strip of metal which you can mount on your chassis.
ETH0
Level 3
13 years ago
We have been using eSata external drives for over a year now and found out that esata connectors are not designed for being unplugged a lot. We had to replace several esata cables and disk enclosures because of connection problems and esata connectors breaking. You also have to find an esata controller card that supports hot swapping. I tried using the mainboard sata ports at first but the server would freeze when hot swapping the eSata drives.
pkh
Moderator
13 years ago
When you unplugged the eSata drive, did you eject it first like you would if you are using an USB drive?
ETH0
Level 3
13 years ago
No I did not "eject" it in windows but I am using an eSATA card now and I can unplug the drives now without ejecting them first. The only things I wanted to point out is that in my experience a USB3 plug is better suited for daily removal than an eSATA connector and that some onboard SATA controllers don't like to be "hot" plugged.