Using an LTO Tape library?

[johnhamelink]

Hi there!

I'm building my first ever rack. One of the things I want my rack to handle is media archival. I managed to buy (what I /think/ is) a good deal on an MSL2024 with an LTO-6 drive. I've never owned or used one before! I'm still waiting on a few parts to arrive (namely the two SAS 8088 cables I'll need to connect to the external HBA on my server). My question is: I'd like to build some periodic jobs which would migrate content to the tapes via LTFS based on how often the content is accessed. How might I do this with TrueNAS Scale? Would it be better to do this inside a container or on the host? Are there any tools in particular I should look at? I've seen various threads pertaining to TrueNAS, but none for SCALE.

Thanks!
JH

 

[ChrisRJ]

Tape drives, such as LTO, are made for backup and not archival purposes. So in that sense your use-case is at least unconventional.

How do you plan to determine the last access date of files and what software do you want to use? Or is the idea to do some custom coding?

 

[johnhamelink]

I'm not afraid of doing a bit of custom coding! My understanding is that using LTFS I can somehow end up with a mountable filesystem, and that this would allow me to move content onto the tapes. I'm hoping I'll then be able to rotate individual tapes out of the library as they are filled (realistically it'll take me a long time to fill all slots on this thing!). But is there any need for me to manage the robot at all in this case? And I can't quite imagine what the idiomatic implementation of all this would be?

> How do you plan to determine the last access date of files and what software do you want to use? Or is the idea to do some custom coding?
Sorry, forgot to respond to this originally - yes, this will come from other software, I do plan on writing some glue for this part!

 

[ChrisRJ]

Are you aware that TrueNAS Scale is an appliance and not a server where you can install software as you like?

 

[johnhamelink]

Yes I'm fully aware of that, in fact I've been working on some Truecharts over Xmas!

Is the insinuation then that I should build a docker container with some LTO-drive related tools on it (mt and mtx? Is that all I need?) as well as my custom glue code to control the drive and perform the archive, and then to forward the device somehow to the container in order to control it? Then in kubernetes YAML ensure that the container has access to the ZFS pool I want to work with, and that I should trigger it periodically with a cron job resource?

However if there is a well trodden path here that others have used and is idiomatically TrueNAS SCALE - that's what I want to do.

 

[AlexeyGankov]

I am looking for some kind LTO solutions for TrueNas too. Now, we use QStar and XenData systems for LTO archives (both about 1 Pb) with disk cache (50-100 Gb). They are very specific and complex to setup and tune software. The idea to connect LTO library to TrueNas storage is brilliant but I didn't find anything about that. (Maybe https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ahJ2nlOi9U ).