Entries categorized under “Physical Tape”

We can all get caught up in the hoopla of new and slick storage technology features and lose sight of some the most important and basic details that keep our storage fabrics up and humming. Among these are the Fibre Channel cabling infrastructures and the distance limitations incurred by continued increases in FC speeds. (read more)

I have to admit that once upon a time, I was on the "I hate tape" bandwagon. In the past, I spent too many days, nights and weekends as an administrator troubleshooting failed backups and then doing slow recoveries from a media I barely understood (or wanted to understand). But more recently I have found myself breaking through my "I hate tape" mentality. (read more)

It is funny how this industry changes almost from week to week. Sometimes there is so much activity going on you do not even know where to start. Other times (like during holiday shortened weeks such as this one), it is difficult to find anything really noteworthy to write about. In light of the fact that this week was a bit quiet from a news perspective, I wanted to reflect on some innovation occurring in the area of LTO-5 tape and how this might lead to a renewed interest in tape media in the years to come. (read more)

Businesses that think they are sheltered from data growth better think again. Recent statistical evidence suggests that by 2011 every man, woman and child on the globe will each consume over 260 GBs of data. While this has many implications, it clearly illustrates that businesses better be prepared to continue to identify and implement more cost-effective data storage solutions such as the NEO S-Series with its new LTO-5 tape drives from Overland Storage. (read more)

It is easy to think that the arguments regarding the cost of disk versus tape have abated. While that may be true in some circles, it still rages in the circle of small and midsized businesses (SMBs) that purchase and use direct attached media for backup. However a careful analysis of the total cost of ownership between RDX and LTO-3 will show that an RDX disk-based backup solution can be more affordable than a comparably configured LTO-3 tape solution. (read more)

There is no longer any doubt in my mind that tape will be around long after I am gone. Not only did Spectra Logic announce a new tape library (the T-Finity) that is targeted at the very largest of enterprise accounts this week, but a disk storage system representative made the tongue-in-cheek comment that partly serves as the title for this week's blog while we were talking about the possible sunset of specific disk and tape technologies. (read more)

Small and midsize enterprises (SMEs) face some tough choices right now. Disk-based backup is definitely on the rise and has many appealing features, but it can come with a price tag that these organizations simply cannot afford and may not meet all levels of data protection needs. Many SMEs are using tape as a primary backup target or leveraging tape as an archive in a disk-to-disk-to-tape (D2D2T) scenario. It is these requirements that the new NEO® 200s and NEO® 400s entry-level tape libraries announced this week from Overland Storage are designed to address. (read more)

Yesterday and today I am attending the Bare Metal Data Conference in Nashville, TN, which is a small gathering by all accounts (50 attendees). But what I enjoy about this conference is that it is a gathering of a select group of records management providers that provide paper and tape storage along with online backup services to their clients. The invaluable insight that I glean from this conference is a reality check as to the current state of tape. This time it revealed something new: Tape is still doing just fine but for the first time I am detecting genuine concern among the attendees about tape's future. (read more)

We have all heard of the pressures that the current economic downturn is having on companies. Since the beginning of the year, Wall Street Journal, Forrester Research and others have told us that spending on information-technology goods and services for this year is declining or will be declining. But these same outlets are also predicting the current bad economic times are coming to an end and that technology spending will increase again in 2010 across various categories to the degree of 7-10 percent. (read more)

An organization can come up with any number of reasons why it does not encrypt data stored to tape. Encryption is too hard or expensive to implement. The management of the encryption keys is too complicated. The business does not have the time or manpower to deal with encryption right now. These are all valid excuses for not implementing encryption. However, if storing sensitive data to tape remains a part of an organization's long term data management and retention plan, then the growing list of federal and state regulations means it can no longer ignore the need to encrypt its data. (read more)

Two topics - really on opposite ends of the storage spectrum - captured my attention this week. The first had to do with an announcement that Imation made this past Wednesday regarding it being the first and only company currently licensed to manufacture LTO-5 tape media. The other had to do with cloud storage and some of the conversations that I continued to have with various providers in terms of how ready (or not ready) cloud storage is for prime time. (read more)

One might think the data protection world has gone mad. After all of the coverage over the last few years about the "goodness" of disk and the "evils" of tape, a recent announcement from Spectra Logic that it had entered into a new OEM agreement with Symantec ran counter to this disk-based backup craze. What specifically caught my eye in this announcement was that Spectra Logic was now bundling solutions that would integrate Symantec's NetBackup and Backup Exec software solutions with either its disk or its tape library products. (read more)

If one didn't know any better, one would think that deduplicating backup data is going to solve all of IT's backup pains. The current train of thought goes something along the lines of "Plug in a deduplicating appliance, point the backup software at the new appliance and, Voila!, the backup problems are solved." The only problem with that viewpoint is that deduplicating appliances alone do not solve equally pressing corporate data management problems and may even create new backup and data management challenges along the way. (read more)

The use of tape as a primary target for backup has changed over the years. The onslaught of low-cost, disk-to-disk based backup solutions coupled with the many problems associated with using tape as a primary target has rightfully enticed many data centers not to use tape in that capacity. But that does not mean there is no requirement to use tape within the data center. (read more)

In this final entry in a three-part series, I finish my conversation with Deepak Mohan, Symantec's Information Management Group SVP, as he takes a look at some of the current gaps in data protection and recovery today, tape's evolving role in enterprises and why Symantec still views tape as a viable technology and why large enterprises in general and healthcare IT specifically can benefit from Symantec's suite of products. Mohan provides some specifics on data protection and recovery gaps in different market segments, why the transition from tape to disk is going to occur gradually and why enterprise organizations need an enterprise software solution that addresses all of the needs of today's organizations from the end-user to the data center. (read more)

In looking at the tape market and what it needs to provide in tape libraries to meet today's organizational needs, it is refreshes, not overhauls, that are required to align with these needs. Because tape libraries are becoming a secondary, as opposed to a primary, backup target in customer environments, tape library providers need to re-prioritize and even scale back the number of changes they make because if users do not want or use specific features, they will not pay for them. (read more)

Over the last few months DCIG has spent fair amount of time researching and documenting specific reasons why tape will not die. Green IT is the one reason we most often hear cited for retaining tape, though new disk-based deduplication and replication technologies coupled with new disk storage system designs that are based on grid storage architectures can offset some of those concerns. So before organizations think that after 30, 90 or 180 days that they should immediately move their archival and backup data, deduplicated or otherwise, from disk to tape just to save money, there are certain intangible savings from an eDiscovery perspective that keeping data on disk provides that are not always feasible on tape. (read more)

The use of tape as a primary target for backup has supposedly changed in large part due to the onslaught of new disk-based backup solutions with many features that are enticing data centers to change course. One could even say that vendors and analysts have abandoned tape for greener pastures by seeking to associate themselves with disk's sexier features--all the while forgetting about tape's evolving role within the data center. (read more)

Right now many companies are feeling a little despondent as they go into this holiday season and look to 2009. Many are looking at the possibility of or have already completed workforce reductions and now are trying to figure out how to reshape the company going forward. So while the near-term outlook appears grim, there are two ways companies can respond that are probably best summed up by two Chinese expressions. Companies can look at this situation and view it as hopelessly perilous or one that, if properly taken advantage of, can create new opportunities. (read more)

Recently a blog entry appeared on the Byte & Switch website that asks the question if tape will be cancelled due to a lack of customer interest. In short, the author of the article, George Crump, postulates that customers are losing interest in tape partly because tape manufacturers are taking more interest in selling disk than tape. As a result, more innovations are occurring in disk libraries while tape libraries languish. But has tape in fact outlived its usefulness? (read more)

It is sometimes argued that media such as optical and tape are better options for archiving data when compared to disk because they have a longer shelf life, up to 100 years in the case of some optical media. Further, optical and tape vendors also argue that they are "greener" than disk because they do not have the same heating, cooling and power requirements that disk may have when used for archive. (read more)

Disposing aging, depreciated or unneeded tape cartridges is an age old problem that companies resolve in one of three ways: they destroy them; they store them; or, they trade them in for hard cash or credits from resellers. This last option generates more than passing interest from companies since it offers them the opportunity to generate some revenue (or at least offset the cost of new tape cartridges). However the liabilities associated with the data on these recycled tape cartridges landing up in the wrong hands may outweigh whatever cost savings companies hope to achieve. (read more)

Companies sometimes assume that they must continue to use legacy archival techniques for retaining their critical intellectual property and business data. Based upon my experience, when developing new and more up-to-date archival strategies for organizations, tape and optical can no longer be viewed as the primary media for archival data. (read more)

Our understanding of LTO-4 tape drive encryption is that individual tape drive vendors may encrypt data in different manners. We cautioned that if you have not standardized on an LTO-4 tape drive vendor, an LTO-4 tape cartridge encrypted by one vendor's drive may not be readable on another's LTO-4 tape drive. Our specific quote was "So even if all your tape drives are LTO-4, if they are from different vendors, an LTO tape encrypted by one tape drive may not work in another." (read more)

While SaaS (Software as a Service) gets most of the press, SAS (Serial Attached SCSI) is finding its way into increasing numbers of corporate data centers. Parallel SCSI is a proven and reliable data transfer standard and serves the data center well, but all good things must eventually come to an end. With U320 parallel SCSI being the last stop on the SCSI roadmap, and with the advantages SAS has to offer over parallel SCSI, SAS is almost a certainty for the industry at large and your company specifically. (read more)