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Tape backup planning and strategies are a very important part of business continuity and data disaster recovery. From an archival standpoint, tapes offer a convenient method of storage and small footprint for storing offsite or in a fire resistant media safe.
While tape backup does have advantages, there are many cons to tape backup drives and removable media that should be taken into consideration when planning your strategy.
Disadvantages
First of all, tape backup includes a variety of security risks including employee theft, loss, broken tapes due to operator error. Mitigating these data security risks by automating the backup process is a common approach, often using disk based backup to automate the process.
Secondly, the operational recovery from tape has long been in debate. Several research studies suggest that recovery from tapes is not as easy as it seems. Testing tapes to verify that data is recoverable often causes damage to the tape itself rendering it useless for recovery.
The costs associate with a daily, weekly and even monthly tape backup strategy approach $60,000 per business location, per year. While these costs are often unavoidable (especially for large enterprises) there are several new hardware solutions that will both mitigate the data security risks as well as strengthen disaster recovery plans.
New Methods and Approaches
Supplementing or augmenting an off site tape backup strategy with a hard disk or NAS storage server system is quickly becoming the standard. For companies that have already invested heavily into their tape drive systems, replacing new hardware and equipment is usually not feasible in the short term. However, supplementing the tape drive backup with a fire resistant and waterproof hard drive or NAS storage system provides several advantages to a single backup approach.
Deploying ioSafe hardware in an off site or on site tape backup environment provides immediate advantages over traditional tape backup.
Tape and Disk Backup Advantages
Mitigating data security risks - installing ioSafe hardware means you will now be able to automate the backup process and remove the human element from your backup strategy. Human error accounts for more data loss than any other risk. Tape backup means that your IT staff, or other employees must rotate, change, and store backup tapes.
Data recovery and verification from disk has proven time and again that RPO and RTO can be achieved to an "up to the point of disaster." With ioSafe data storage hardware you'll be able to recover your data from today, not last night's tape or last week's data.
When it comes to ROI (return on investment) and overall costs associated with data backup, combining a disk based system means you'll save more money. Even if you still need to do a tape archive of your data, you can now reduce from a daily tape rotation to a weekly - reducing costs of staff as well as equipment.
This belts and suspenders approach to off site tape backup has many advantages for both small and large businesses. As you reevaluate your on site backup plan and your offsite strategy, consider deploying ioSafe technology. After all, data backup is like an insurance policy... how much coverage do you need??
