LVM for vtapes

Interesting discussion in other threads got me wondering
whether I should have made some other choices when setting
up my vtape environment.  Particularly whether I should
have used LVM (Logical Volume Management) to create one
large filesystem covering my multiple dedicated disks.

Its a topic I do not recall being discussed, pros & cons.

Let me describe my current vtape environment as a starting
point.  I have 6 hard drives dedicated to vtapes, 3x3TB
and 3x4TB, 21TB total.  I have 240 vtapes of 100GB (0.1TB)
allocated.  That works out to 11-12 vtapes/TB.

When I first set things up, I did not like the idea of
one drive having all consecutive vtapes meaning it would
exclusively be used for about a month and not used again
for about 4 months.

Instead I allocated blocks of 8-12 vtapes on one drive
and the next block on the next drive ...  In part I felt
on drive failure, it would minimize my loss exposure of
recent backups to about a week rather than a month.

I wonder whether I might have instead just pooled the
six drives into one logical volume and not worry about
specific allocation ov vtapes to specific drives.

Hmmm, 21TB filesystem, hell of a beast to fsck ;)

Has anyone used LVM for their vtapes?  Positive or
negative results to report?

Jon

-- 
Jon H. LaBadie                 [email protected]
  11226 South Shore Rd.          (703) 787-0688 (H)
  Reston, VA  20190              (703) 935-6720 (C)