With storage capacities growing by leaps and bounds, the need for effective backup is even more important. We look at your options.
The primary purpose for a tape drive is to store and back up data. By installing a tape drive with removable media, data can be physically stored away from your machine. Should your computer become unusable, your critical data files can reliably be retrieved with a minimum of effort.
There are many different strategies for protecting data, which brings on the debate about tape vs disk. Tape however still represents the most logical and cost-effective solution.
Tape vs Disk
Disk is now playing an important factor in data protection. Some of the key features of disk over tape are:
- Backup is much quicker than with tape
- Fast restoration can be crucial for mission critical data
- Users are less likely to know for sure whether a backup has successfully completed with tape
- Disk prices have fallen
Tape is essential in data protection for the following reasons:
- Offers higher storage capacities
- Automated tape libraries still offer lowest cost per GB
- Media is interchangeable
- Mirrored disks offer no protection against viruses, theft, or natural disasters
- Data can be stored offsite
- It has a long shelf life (30 years)
Generally with less mission-critical situations you would use tape; the more important the data is, the more likely it is you would choose disk. However, having a combination of these two technologies can ensure that all the bases are covered.
Storage requirements
In order to understand your business' storage requirements, you should work out what services are of paramount importance to you. A good way to optimise your operations in terms of cost and risks is by selecting the right backup and restore solution.
Picking the right solution to best meet your business needs may mean having a mixture of different solutions. For this review we were only concerned with standard tape storage devices. The Quantum DX30, which we also tested, would sit in either the business-critical or mission-critical storage set.
Deployment
One of the things you must do before deploying any sort of backup system is to create and adhere to a data protection strategy. This can be as simple as attaching a single tape drive to a server via SCSI or as complex as having multiple tape libraries connected to a SAN through Fibre Channel.
You should consider your current and future data requirements in terms of performance, capacity, and the backup window. Backup windows have shrunk as many enterprises that have gone global have become increasingly dependent on transaction-oriented systems. So to remain competitive, they can't afford to take key systems offline for too long.
You will also need to look at scalability. Is it a proven technology that you are buying? Some drives have been around for years and their manufacturers continue to provide us with helpful roadmaps. There are technologies like DDS, which are reliable and widely used that don't have any future roadmaps. Expanding these systems will require more hardware since an increase in capacity is unlikely to emerge.
It is also important to evaluate your choice of backup software as there are many specific features that can enhance your backup process. Some of the more popular packages out there include Veritas Backup Exec, Veritas Net Backup (64 bit, High-End), Computer Associates, and ARCserve.
Let's look at the various tape formats.
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