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BACKUP
BASICS |
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IMPORTANCE
OF QUALITY |
When building
a Backup system or adding to it, you should look for components
that offer:
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Reliability: Backup requires high-quality everything. Make
your decisions based on uptime. Backups need to happen daily
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Interoperability:
Check that all the hardware, software and media that you choose
will work together seamlessly
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Certified
and Qualified: Reduce the risk of interoperability issues
or data loss by choosing components that have been certified
and/or qualified by the technology platforms on which they
operate
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Service
contracts: Take into consideration the different levels of
service offered by different vendors. You may have redundant
components that you can afford to ship away for warranty service
or upgrades, and others may be critical enough that you need
same-day onsite 24-hour-per-day coverage
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Future
growth: Choose technology platforms that will offer what you
need today – and tomorrow. What future products will
the company or platform offer? Are they compatible with today's
available products? Will they offer products that will be
able to handle your data volume in the future?
Components
of a Backup system include: Media, Drives and Automation, Cost
of data loss, any other tape media you buy for data storage
be it DLTtape or Super DLTtape media
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Today, with
the volume of information increasing exponentially, reliable
recording and preservation of data is an absolute must. One
of the most critical links in this process is the quality of
the backup tape itself.
Look
for media that offers:
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High capacity to handle today's large data volumes
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Reliability
to stand up to weekly and monthly overwrites and potentially
thousands of load/unload cycles
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Durability
to endure the frequent travel offsite
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Long
archive life, ensuring your data is there many years later
Buy only media that have been certified or qualified by its respective
technology platform. Generally this is indicated by a logo licensed
by the platform. This ensures that the media that you are choosing
meets a set of standards, specifications and tests administered
by a governing body. The uses of tape are not limited to backup
and archive, however. Consider tape for storage of application
data, such as video, CAD/CAM, and imaging files. The low cost
per gigabyte of tape storage makes it an economical alternative
to on-line storage. How much will you need? Are you adequately
protecting your business data?
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Select drives that can perform day-in and day-out at high
duty cycles
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Make
sure your drives are compatible from generation to generation
so that prior-generation formats can always be read
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Look
for scalability in the technology to grow with your business
needs
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Choose
an autoloader or library with enough media slots to meet capacity
needs in the future, not just today
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Large
data sets and small backup windows require libraries that
hold multiple tape drives. The right library will hold enough
drives to meet current throughput needs and will allow for
expansion so that additional drives can be added as throughput
needs grow
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Choose
technology that you are confident will be around tomorrow
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THE
COST OF DATA LOSS - WHY TAPE? |
The
cost of lost data can be staggering — far greater than the
cost of putting in place a robust data protection plan. In addition
to costs due to downtime, legal liability is a factor for some records.
To protect yourself, tape is an important part of any data protection
plan.
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APPLICATION |
INDUSTRY |
HOURLY
COST |
| Retail
Brokerage |
Finance |
$
6.5 million |
| Credit
Card Authorization |
Finance |
$
2.6 million |
| Home
shopping channels |
Retail |
$
113,750 |
| Catalog
Sales |
Retail |
$
90,000 |
| Airline
Reservation |
Transport |
$
89,500 |
| Package
Shipping Service |
Transport |
$
28,250 |
| Small
Business |
- |
$
18,000 |
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While
other storage options, including disk drives, CD-ROM, and DVD,
are designed for varying applications, tape drives and media are
designed specifically for critical data backup. Characteristics
of tape include:
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Mobility: Storing tape off-site is standard procedure. Tapes
can be stored for many years and can be read or overwritten
with any compatible drive
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Affordability:
Tape is very cost effective – less than 30¢ per
GB* for the latest generation of Tapes
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High
capacity: Relative to CD/DVD technology, tape offers more
capacity on a single piece of media.
For example: Super DLTtape I can hold 320GB of compressed
data on a single tape, 150 times more than a single CD &
more than 20 times more than a single DVD
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Durability:
CD and DVD media are exposed to scratches & fingerprints
during normal handling & loading/unloading. Tape media
is inside a plastic cartridge minimizing the threat of damage
to the media
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Reliability:
1,000,000 head passes & a 30-year archive life
Corporate
data may exist on several different storage technologies. However,
tape is usually the "last line of defense" to restore
data that does not exist in any other form. That's why it's
important to follow best practices and choose a reliable, robust
tape technology to protect your most valuable asset –
your data.
For example:
SDLT
320 drive storing 320GB compressed data on a Super DLTtape I
cartridge or SDLT 600 drive storing 600GB compressed data on
a Super DLTtape II cartridge.
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