Is Tape Backup Dead?

Tape backup has received a lot of press recently--much of it none too flattering. Stories of vanishing data at some of the largest financial institutions have been everywhere. All of these incidents, combined with a sharper focus on security, have many organizations wondering if tape alternatives aren't better-suited for backup.

Chris Taylor is director of professional services and sales solutions at Hamel, Minn.-based Evolving Solutions.

Companies oftentimes need to move physical storage devices from one location to another. In the event of a disaster, many of these organizations find it less expensive to buy new disks for data storage than to restore data from tape. The amount it would cost the company in delays due to the recovery process makes the cost of new disks seem like chicken feed.

Anyone who has had to do a full restore knows that the recovery process required for tape can be complex and time-consuming. With downtime being public enemy No. 1 for IT staff and management, near-line storage solutions like disk-based backups are becoming more popular. This is a sweet spot for companies that are 24/7/365 operations.

One way to address the needs for faster restores and longer-term storage and data archiving is to utilize solutions that incorporate both tape and disk. For example, critical backup data is stored on disk for rapid restore. The user then decides how many versions of the data should reside on disk.

For disaster recovery, a copy of the critical data can also be copied to tape and a second copy produced for off-site storage. Less critical data can be staged to disk and then written directly to tape. By using this method, data that is less mission-critical can be staged to tape over time, and the mission-critical data is available "near-line on disk" for a much quicker restore.

When pondering a disk-based backup solution, consider appliances that can reduce disk-based backup capacity by leveraging compression or data-reduction techniques.

One of the goals of disk-based backup systems is to reduce the administrative complexity of managing backups and restores. Also, it's important to ensure that the backup administration staff and management team incorporate this solution into their processes.

Tape will continue to be a vital component of data-center storage solutions in the future. Tape isn't dead; it's just changed its positioning in the lifecycle of data storage.

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