Only just seen this, but yes - I’ve quite a bit of experience with tape on Linux and Solaris, including robotic tape libraries.
First thing - has your server got an interface to connect to the tape drive? Looks like that particular drive uses SAS2, but you’ll also encounter fiberchannel tape and LVD SCSI.
Second - Tape drives are very susceptible to dust contamination. If you’re only planning occasional use (once a week, once a month) - it might be better to go for an external drive in an enclosure. This has two advantages; you can use the drive on multiple servers (provided they have an external interface port), and secondly you can turn the drive off and put it away when not in use.
Internal drives are subject to the server’s airflow all the time, and the door flap does nothing to prevent dust ingress. One of my internal LTO2 drives died last week because of this. I’m hoping to remove it, strip it down and clean it; but that requires a server outage (which an external drive would not).
Thirdly - backup application. Tar is great for occasional use, and the format is standard. However, with tar you usually have to read through the entire backup from the beginning to restore a single file. With some tricks you can log the offset of each file within the tar archive when the backup is made, then if a restore is needed use “mt seek” to skip straight to the file on tape (saves reading the whole tape to restore one file).
The Linux “dump” utility automates this logging of tape position via its “quick file access” (QFA) feature. For home use or small office, using LVM snapshots and “dump” with QFA is a powerful backup solution, but you still have to do the media management yourself (ie manage the cycle of which tape to use when).
For a larger environment, you’ll probably want a dedicated backup application and a robotic tape library with multiple drives. The tapes have a barcode attached to the rear and the tape library has a barcode reader. The application can then track each tape and knows when the backups expire and the tape can be re-used.
Finally - Most recent tape drives support “TapeAlert”, and it’s useful to know you can manually read “TapeAlerts” with the Linux “smartctl” utility, for example (from my failing, dust contaminated LTO2 drive):
# smartctl -d scsi --all /dev/sg4
smartctl 6.5 2016-05-07 r4318 [x86_64-linux-4.4.172] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-16, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org
=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Vendor: CERTANCE
Product: ULTRIUM 2
Revision: 1914
Serial number: xxxxxxx
Device type: tape
Local Time is: Thu Mar 14 15:09:51 2019 GMT
Temperature Warning: Enabled
=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
TapeAlert Supported
TapeAlert Errors (C=Critical, W=Warning, I=Informational):
[0x0f] W: The memory in the tape cartridge has failed, which reduces
performance. Do not use the cartridge for further write operations.
[0x11] W: You have loaded a cartridge of a type that is read-only in this drive.
The cartridge will appear as write-protected.
[0x12] W: The tape directory on the tape cartridge has been corrupted. File
search performance will be degraded. The tape directory can be rebuilt
by reading all the data on the cartridge.
Error counter log:
Errors Corrected by Total Correction Gigabytes Total
ECC rereads/ errors algorithm processed uncorrected
fast | delayed rewrites corrected invocations [10^9 bytes] errors
read: 0 0 0 0 0 0.000 0
write: 0 0 0 0 0 0.000 0
Device does not support Self Test logging
# smartctl -d scsi --all /dev/sg4
smartctl 6.5 2016-05-07 r4318 [x86_64-linux-4.4.172] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-16, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org
=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Vendor: CERTANCE
Product: ULTRIUM 2
Revision: 1914
Serial number: xxxxxxx
Device type: tape
Local Time is: Thu Mar 14 15:31:15 2019 GMT
Temperature Warning: Enabled
=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
TapeAlert Supported
TapeAlert Errors (C=Critical, W=Warning, I=Informational):
[0x05] C: The tape is damaged or the drive is faulty. Call the tape drive
supplier helpline.
[0x14] C: The tape drive needs cleaning:
1. If the operation has stopped, eject the tape and clean the drive.
2. If the operation has not stopped, wait for it to finish and then
clean the drive.
Check the tape drive users manual for device specific cleaning instructions.
[0x03] W: The operation has stopped because an error has occurred while reading
or writing data that the drive cannot correct.
Error counter log:
Errors Corrected by Total Correction Gigabytes Total
ECC rereads/ errors algorithm processed uncorrected
fast | delayed rewrites corrected invocations [10^9 bytes] errors
read: 0 0 0 0 0 0.000 0
write: 0 0 0 0 0 0.000 0
Device does not support Self Test logging