Is Tape Backup Dead?
There have been countless predictions over the years about the death of tape backup. One of the latest proposed death knells for tape media is Advanced Technology Attachment (ATA). ATA, which is not new, is an internal interface used in disk-to-disk backup systems that presents a SCSI, Fibre Channel or Gigabit Ethernet face to the outside world. Interestingly enough three companies that sell ATA based products (IBM, StorageTek and Quantum) are also among the founding members of the Tape Technology Council. According to TTC's stated mission, "The Tape Technology Council realizes a need to promote and educate the market about the features, advantages, and benefits of tape technology; provide a forum for resolving issues that may inhibit industry growth; increase the market's awareness and understanding of tape technology; and serve as a resource of information to the market." Put very simply tape backup alternatives are popping up all the time, but even the manufacturers of these alternatives continue to push tape media. Let's explore a little further.
Large Corporations
One of the main uses of tape is for system backup. For the large corporate user with multi terabytes of data,
tapes are relatively inexpensive and perfect for sending backups and archives off-site for security.
Manufactures continue to increase tape capacity in-line with data requirements and cost per gigabyte is
decreasing so the value proposition of tape media is very compelling for data centers.
Take the latest Ultrium and DLT offerings for example. The DLT IV™ tape offers 80GB of compressed capacity with a transfer rate up to 12MB/second, and the Super DLTTape™ offers up to 320GB of compressed capacity with a transfer rate of up to 32MB/second. In comparison the Ultium™ Generation 1 tape offers 200GB of compressed capacity with a transfer rate up to 20 - 40MB/second and the Generation 2 offers 400GB of compressed capacity with a transfer rate of 40 - 80MB/seconds. Both of these mid-range alternatives have increased dramatically in terms of capacity since inception while the cost (per megabyte) has continued to come down. As a result of the increasing viability, data centers have invested heavily in tape media not just for disaster backup sites but also for archival and retrieval processes. They are simply not going to replace their current structure especially in today's financial environment.
Another often overlooked factor for tapes continued existence is the ever-increasing legislative climate. Companies are being mandated to keep their data for longer and longer periods of time, and tape, if stored properly, can protect data for very long periods of time. The one factor to consider in the longevity of tape media is that the tape may be around in 20 years, but will the tape drive still be around?
And finally, lets not forget the portability of tape media. Most corporations (especially mainframe) have a need to distribute data to clients, vendors etc. Perhaps tax information for example. It's not practical to ship disk, and it's not cheap to send electronically. Tape media is ideal for these applications.
Small Business or Home User
When you examine the small business, home user and often growing businesses, the picture is less clear. One would
like to think that most people do appreciate that some form of backup is important, but very often procedures put
in place bare no relationship to the value of the data that could be potentially lost. eMag often get calls from
people asking if we can recover data from their crashed hard disk or floppy disks. When we make a comment about
reloading their backup, the phone normally goes dead.
The most common solutions that are proposed other than a full tape backup are to copy files to floppy disks, CDs (or DVDs) or onto a second hard disk. All these approaches accept that a failure can occur, but the job of restoring a system back to its original state can still be very difficult. The system configuration, all programs that have been downloaded or updated since the original installation, will need to be reconfigured again. For some people the second alternative, hard disk, is often seen as very attractive, but this alternative also has numerous flaws. A major power spike, a building fire or simple theft means that everything can be lost. Also system error or operator error could feasibly delete both hard disks.
One key point of any backup procedure is to move backups to different sites (the practice of mainframe sites). In the case of a user or small business, the simplest recommendation could be to take work backups home and vice versa. This is where tapes begin to look very attractive. They do not need any special handling, and normal domestic storage or office storage is fine. The second big advantage of a tape is that it can back a complete system up often on a single tape, and so if there is a complete system failure (such as a result of a theft) the complete configuration can be restored very quickly.
In conclusion, experts have been predicting the death of tape for decades now. Eventually the progression made in all technologies will mean the end of tape, but for now and the foreseeable future, tape will continue to exist because there is simply not a compelling alternative to encourage users to switch.
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