Discussion on:

Are Tape Backup systems obsolete?

So many businesses have huge infrastructure commitments around tape. Sure you can switch but there are procedures, hardware that isn't fully depreciated, etc. that make the switch less obvious than your blog suggests.

That said, I much prefer hard disk back up to tape.

The depreciation issues make me VERY mad whenever I hear it. It all depends on how you do Accounting. I've seen companies willing to continue to dump money in to a bad investment just because something hasn't been fully depreciated yet. The fact of the matter is, you've already paid for it, it's just that a particular department hasn't had it counted against them yet. The depreciation issue is so frustrating because it forces companies to continue using slow hardware and pay massive amounts of support fees to maintain their bad or obsolete investment.

That is the reasion companys stay with tape backups. It will not cost more money to keep it. At most companys if a software productis paid for, and seems to be working. Why should they invest in a new product at a higher price?
If no one can show that a newer product can protect the company? Well look at all the news about computers and laptops being stolen.
If a company wants to dump a old set of computers, they should remove all drives and sell as is.

I work for a publicly held company and what I buy and how long it is to last is rolled up to be a part of what our investors see. If tape didn't work well (and it does) it would be a different issue and I'd write it off but otherwise, I am not spending my budget wisely because I would be replacing something that isn't scheduled to be replaced.

I understand your frustration on the one hand but I'm not sure tape is bad or obolete, just not necessarily state of the art.

I'm not saying that everyone has to dump everything they have now. I'm saying that for people that are building something now, this is something to consider. In my experience and anyone else I've ever talked to, Tape is extremely unreliable.

I have been performing tape backups and restores since 1972 or so. Magnetic tape is known to have flaws, consequently the devices that use tape for storage incorporate redundancies into the data -- multi-bit ECC (Error Correcting Code). While I was in the Navy I used open-reel tapes; and they were periodically "certified" on a machine that cleaned and tested the tapes. Backups were done scrupulously, generations maintained -- dailies, weeklies, monthlies. The certified tapes always worked and I have never had a failure to restore using Exabyte 8 mm helical-scan tapes or the current Ultrium tapes. I *have* had restore failures at sites that did not use certification procedures and which used recording techniques lacking any kind of ECC.

For the sake of speed I use a 7 generation disk-to-disk backup using rsync as an auxiliary to tape backup. Rsync is amazingly fast and maintains what looks like 7 full backup sets but in fact uses just a little bit more than the space of one. Files that have not actually changed get "hard linked" rather than copied -- looks the same, restores the same as if it was a real copy, but of course is nearly instantaneous and uses no extra space.

Anything that must be restored from more than 7 days old comes from the tape library where the daily, weekly and monthly tapes are kept.

Online backups are vulnerable to worms, viruses and logic bombs, tapes locked in a safe -- with the write protect tab set -- are much more secure repositories of data.

The problem for deep history is the rapidly changing technology of *everything*. In 5 years from now, will I be able to read a 250 gb external disk drive, or an Ultrium tape? It is probably easier to "bring forward" disk-to-disk libraries. I have tapes from 5 years ago that I really have very little hope of reading -- QIC 80's, Travan, Iomega. However, before I discarded the QIC 80 computer and drive, I copied the tapes to CD-ROM; then I use digital signatures (PGP or MD5 checksums) to provide integrity assurance since the originals no longer exist.

Have some acquaintances who own a small CDP firm.

Encrypted, offsite, end-to-end equipment owned by the customer, and the cost becomes a monthly expense, and not clogging up the capital accounts.

Still an uphill battle.

Sure I've only been exposed to Auto Loaders and Tape Libraries but they just work and you have a fairly good idea that if they are stolen they will not be able to be read unlike DVD or HDD backup solutions.

I really don't see a major problem with Tape sure it could be faster in the event of a complete failure to reload the data but if that was to happen you are not going to be overly worried about the speed of the reinstall are you?

I've pulled tape out of water that been covering the machines for a couple of weeks and it wasn't clean water either but muddy flood water with God only knows what in it. I hosed out the Tapes and they all worked on the replacement hardware that we brought in to replace all the written off hardware. I actually used the last Tape backup first but as it was the second oldest it didn't have all the data on it when the water started coming in no one thought to open the Auto Loader and grab the tapes but even still it wasn't a real problem to make them usable again though I'll admit I only used them the once.

Personally until something more reliable and secure becomes available for my bigger clients tape is still the way to go. One customer insisted on using a HDD in a USB Caddy and when the data was really needed the drive was dead so it was a major problem which cost a lot of money to recover the data from. Tape on the other hand can be placed into another drive to be read and provided it's kept away from magnets it just works. I've also seen DVD Backup that where not protected properly and warped because they where left in a car in our summer. Not in direct sunlight but they still got hot enough to be useless luckily they where not important at the time or there would have been some serious damage done to the company.

I've just found tape to be far more robust in transport by the owners of the business who don't know how to protect things properly and I've yet to run into a wiped tape library because someone has done something silly. Recently I was called into my Local GP's place on a Sunday morning to rebuild their Y2K Server because the owner had plugged in a USB HDD and done something which had wiped all the data. If I remember correctly he had upgraded the Medical Program that they use there and it trashed the entire Data System though the computers worked perfectly. I had to recover the HDD and then allow them to reload the data Thankfully I had a copy of On Track on my NB and it wasn't such a big job but if I wasn't available I don't even want to think about it. OH it was a Freebie to as I was given the option of getting the data back or having the place closed down the next week and I was very politely told that I couldn't get any Meds from them without the Data. So I didn't really have a choice in that one.

Col

"Sure I've only been exposed to Auto Loaders and Tape Libraries but they just work and you have a fairly good idea that if they are stolen they will not be able to be read unlike DVD or HDD backup solutions."

How do you claim this? You can apply something like EFS encryption to hard drives just as easily.

But do you want to if you really need the data on it and not have the encryption key there as well?

With Tape if it's stolen or lost there is very little chance that people responsible will have the ability to read the tape where as a HDD or DVD solution is a different story isn't it? Sure there is no way around a Profession Theft but these are rare and it's mostly amateurs who are responsible for lifting something that was there at the time so these are crimes of convenience not the premeditated type where Industrial Espionage is involved.

So from that prospective I see tape as far more secure than any other presently available solution.

Col

"But do you want to if you really need the data on it and not have the encryption key there as well?"

Good encryption systems keep the key separate. That's basic best practice. The keys are also on the backup server itself and you should always have a master EFS recovery key.

"With Tape if it's stolen or lost there is very little chance that people responsible will have the ability to read the tape where as a HDD or DVD solution is a different story isn't it? Sure there is no way around a Profession Theft but these are rare and it's mostly amateurs who are responsible for lifting something that was there at the time so these are crimes of convenience not the premeditated type where Industrial Espionage is involved."

Try telling that to the SOX or HIPAA auditor.

What exactly?

I work on the premise that there will be a total catastrophe involved and that none of the hardware in the office will be available to use as it will have been destroyed.

I've been through 2 major floods and that is exactly what I've run into on multiple systems when I was working for IBM to fix these destroyed systems. This wasn't confined to just one company but every client of IBM in Brisbane who was flood affected. In the CBD all the server rooms are underground and every one of them including all the banks where under several floors of muddy junk that was a health hazard to even be near. Then with the water restrictions that where in place we couldn't even hose out the mess. We had to wait weeks till the sludge had turned into a hard mess and then use a fire hose to move the bulk of it into the nearest lift wells so it could be pumped out from there. Most of the hardware involved was covered in a thick brown/black mess that we where not supposed to touch but had to remove it all and unbolt things from the floor and lift cable grates with out using our hands because we where not covered for any injury or sickness that we contracted as a result of this work. Now where exactly would you like to store the encryption keys and still have them usable?

Lets draw a line under this one and agree to disagree.

Col

we have several international sites, and fully backup our server equipment along with data from over 5000+ users on standard dlt's and he doesn't have a problem with it so I'm wondering what it is that your local SOX or HIPAA auditor would have a problem with.

Tape works great, easy to use, supported by industry leading software provided by vendors like Veritas, easy to bring offsite and is only usable by the hardware it's intended for (tape drives).

External usb hdd storage solutions are gaining popularity and coming down in price but harddrives are more prone to failures than tapes ever would be. Not everyone uses efs encryption (although they should be if using this backup method) and in the case of a damaged harddrive, cost for retrieving data could be thousands of dollars per harddrive and with no guarantee of total data recovery.

Tape isn't that expensive to replace, isn't prone to failure nearly as much as harddrives are and are easily portable which makes them great for offsite storage.

I still have dlt's from 98 that have data on them that I can access. How many harddrives do you have that are 8 years old and still functional? How many harddrives from 8 years ago provided the same storage capacity as standard dlt's did from that time period. Harddrives have only recently caught up to the same storage limits and again being such a complex piece of hardware is prone to failure. I have never had one tape fail on me in the past 8 years, I have however seen too many harddrive failures on desktops, laptops & servers (thankfully we had tape backups).

DVD media is extremely portable but provides nowhere near the required storage capacity to be viable for big business. Small businesses could probably get away with using DVD as their backup media but that would probably be only practical for very small businesses, it's really only practical for home pc users and even then with the advent of bigger drives comes the requirement for media that can hold more, even dvd media is losing ground here.

George, you sound very adamantly against tape backup? Any reason why? I'd be interested in finding out what backup solution is currently used by TR and how long you've been using it, if you have any alternate backup solutions in place on top of that, etc.

In this particular thread, the discussion is NOT about Tape versus Disks. I'm simply commenting on the comment that it would be "better" to rely on the obscurity of tapes for security than rely on encryption on disks. I'm saying that there is no substitute for encryption in security and that obscurity doesn't cut it.

Yes you can encrypt data on both tape and disks. But that isn't what I was responding to.

I share the feeling on depreciation. Let us ask ourselves - "How long is the depreciation period in your company?", 3/4/5 or 7 years. Depend on your company policy. Looking back to the speed of recent new hardware or technology, how long would you think your notebook is not capable for you on the road. I bet it is 1 ? year. Does this match your depreciation period? NO!! I think the reasonable depreciation period for hardware is 2 years (maximum). Otherwise, this becomes a stopper on business.

Back to the track, my company has tape currently. However, I am considering a harddisk backup solution for daily. The old solution may become a secondary offsite copy.

I've been curious about hard disk backup for quite a while and I found the posts here to be thought-provoking.

We periodically take "checkpoint" backups of our data, which go on tape and go "on the shelf" essentially indefinitely, so that in the event of a problem that is not immediately apparent, we have a "known state" of our data at a point in time.

George's calculations seem to ignore this backup need. If I have a set of tapes, the incremental cost of a checkpoint backup is the cost of media. But I gather that with hard disk backup, I need another set of drives, server, etc. I would like to take checkpoints at key times: month-end, quarterly, end-of-year, at-major-change-point. It seems that a disk solution becomes much more expensive then.

One might argue that all I need is a set of drives, but this requires me to install them in my backup server before they are usable. With a set of tapes, I load them in my autoloader and restoring right away. In an emergency situation, a clean step-by-step recovery procedure builds confidence in the eyes of my stakeholders. They would not want to have to start assembling hardware before we can recover.

I'm very interested in how those who rely on disk backup handle this situation. Thanks!

Journaling file systems let you go back to a point in time. You can do with disks.

Maybe I don't understand how journaling FS's work. Is it really true that a journaling FS can recover back, say, 4 years of changes? I know that revision control systems can do this, but they take a lot of setup and administration; and can sometimes be fragile.

Is this possible with the kind of hardware that you mentioned in your article? Or do you need something in addition?

Sorry if I'm being dense here. If you have examples or can amplify on this, it would help me a lot.

When you're mostly adding data to a database and rarely changing what's already there, I don't see why it would require a lot of space to keep the logs going back that far.

The other thing is that you would probably archive old data anyways so it wouldn't add to the current burden.

Safer than tape or hard disk backups. Less expensive, faster, managed off site, insured and guaranteed, if you need a large data restore they will ship you a hard drive with your data on it.

http://www.abacusbackups.com/

Has been featured on CNet, ZDnet and Computerworld websites too if you want reviews. I can give you plenty of corporate testminonials and happy recovery stories.

Last time I checked, a DS3 45 mbps connection is more than $10K a month. Even so, a DS3 is 22 times slower than a gigabit Ethernet connection. How to you compute faster and less expensive?

Oh, and most companies don't have a DS3 connection to the Internet. Even then, it pails in comparison to even Fast Ethernet.

I agree with you George. A Hot Swappable SCSI NAS or SAN is far more cost effective than the tried and true tape backup. The only advantage tape has now is that tape, like floppy is portable so you can store tapes off site with minimal cost and fuss. You can do the same with drives but accidentally dropping a drive while shipping it off somewhere or banging around isn't good. Accidenally dropping a tape isn't likely to cause the problems that dropping a drive does.

Tape will go the way of floppy disks with NAS and SAN. It's only a matter of time.

With 2 inches of padding, you can drop it 6 feet all you like and it will survive. Tape on the other hand can be dropped, but moisture/air/temperature will kill it. The reliability of Tapes is pathetic, especially if you don't keep it under optimum environmental conditions which is rarely the case in the real world.

We bought blow-molded cases (with pick foam inside) for our USB backup drives, and while I'm not sure about 6 feet yet, it will handle (has handled) 4 with no apparent damage.

I doubt anyone will drop tape 6 feet. Things are usually dropped at 3 or 4 feet at waste or chest level. But thanks for your comments. If you had a 2 inches of soft foam, I would bet that a modern hard drive would survive a 6 food drop. Most laptops have 2 millimeters of padding at best.

In his reply here anyway.
What were your comments with respect to banging hard drives aimed at?

Take the time to review the link before asking redundant questions. Your questions are all explained, I had asked them initially too. Especially in Vancouver where you pay for bandwidth overage(with most business class providers).

Recovery is easier when it comes to individual file selection, there are no tapes to swap, you don't have to wait for verifications, you no longer have to worry about a forgotten tape rotation or failed tape etc. there is more to operational costs than simply your monthly line cost, this saves a lot of IT time and you never have to worry about a filed backup, data is appended each night and not fully backed up unless opted for.

of another company holding on to all of company's data. There are no guarantees regardless of contracts signed that an individual can't access this data and do what they want with it.

Encryption & security sound great but if credit card & banking organizations can get hacked into and have that type of data stolen, what guarantee is there that your company data is safe with an online storage provider such as the one you mentioned.

What happens when this online storage provider has hardware problems or a catastrophe at their end? How do you know how their internal backups are handled and what if everything is lost at their end and you haven't maintained any local backups, you pretty much have nothing at this point. Probably doesn't happen very often (or maybe at all) but the chance always exists.

Pleasant experience. Free customer support, easy to use software, works for (very) large data sets, and good pricing.

http://www.abacusbackups.com

I've used them. Fantastic, free customer service. Even when it's online, especially when the data exceeds 40-50 GB, our experience shows you still need a capable (and available) customer support on the other end.

And they have it. www.abacusBackups.com

Tape has always worked well for me and has saved me many a time. The company where I work isn't going to let me buy anything else relating to backup for another 3 years because of depreciation.

I think hard disk backup has great potential to replace tape, but I'm still concerned about reliability, especially if the disk has been sent off-site.

Online backups to a remote location with a trusted host would be what I would choose. A service. I would still use my tape backup in conjunction with it. Double backup. You can never have too many backups.

The biggest problem for many users is the usage of back ups. Few if any even use it. Even less really understand the proper use and procedures to make backups effective. Tape back ups are the biggest headache, as most users only have one tape. The most common failure is after the new tape has been written but fails to verify..With only one tape, the user has now overwritten their most recent valid backup tape with unverifiable data. I have attempted to get most users to switch to DVD and this has actually been easier for most. There is still a large number who continue to tempt fate by not backing up at all.

With bit-level sync, you don't need to worry about any of that. You only update the file on the bits that's changed, you don't need multiple backup sets with a journaling file system that lets you roll back in time. The fact that it's so much easier makes it more likely backups are done.

I completely agree with you George. I cannot fathom why people are still so loyal to tapes. Bulk hard drive storage is so far beyond tape, it makes you wonder what they find so special about them. Old'schoolers I suppose. Stuck in an era of linear magnetic storage.

Hard drives are far superior to tape. If people can make the effort to protect tapes in the way that they need to be protected to survive, then certainly the appropriate precautions and protections can be arranged for Hard Disks as well. I guess some of them are used to being able to chuck a tape down on a desk without worry. They're just lazy. It doesn't take all that much effort to handle a hard disk correctly.

That have never been removed from a desktop computer?

I don't know about you but I've seen lots spent far more money that I care to think about on behalf of my customers to recover that data off the Dead HDD's that it's not funny. I currently have a contract with the local Data Recovery House only about 10 miles away so I get a better price to strip a Dead HDD and recover the data but it's still measured in the several K$ mark.

The simple data recoveries I do myself if the drive is running then I stand about a 98% chance of recovering the data and that other 2% goes to the Data Recovery House where the costs are much higher.

While the current HDD technology shows signs of promise I personally don't think it's worth the risk of trusting all your valuable data to a drive that gets moved around so much and hence runs a greater change of turning up DOA when it's really needed.

But you are welcome to your choice I just hope that you never live to Regret It.

Col

Virtual Tape, anyone?

A virtualised solution can carry major benefits- depending on the data and the need to touch the the data.

Worth a look...

Not all company stored data in SunOS or UNIX servers.

Some used Linux. Linux does not support booting from tape if I'm not mistaken. I don't have anything towards Linux, in fact I admin many Linux servers. So, how long does it took to restore data from tape drive on Linux server. First you have to install the OS, assuming that the OS corrupted already. Then you can restore from the tape drive. That if using internal tape drive.

What if using centralized tape drive such as Data Protector ? You have to install the backup agent first.

In other words the time taken, the procedures, wouldn't it be more complex ? Better have some latest backup in HDD located in remote server and have a few weeks or months of backup in array of tapes.

I think the restore process nowadays is too complex. Are we doing backup just for the purpose 1. to show that we have done our job so that the management happy ?
OR
2. to restore and run our database server as fast as we could ?
3. Any other reason ?

If number 2 is the reason, so restore procedure is really important. If number 1, then we should document the restore procedure, cover it with plastic file (so that it would still intact after many years ) then put it away in a cabinet.

Our tape drive went "pop". ?700.00 to replace. And then all the tapes. And then the installation and setup time. And then paying the member of staff to change the tape and carry one offsite every day.

No thanks.

A server on the lan, in a remote building, locked away, accepts copies of the backups from the other servers onto a couple of cheap, large IDE disks.

Restoring is fast, running costs miniscule, and if the building catches fire, I recover the server from the other building and rebuild our business elsewhere.

Why would you still bother with tape?!

400 gigabytes is way too much data to transmit offsite. It is far cheaper and dramatically faster to carry an Ultrium tape offsite. Clearly, the cost-benefit ratio depends on how much data you have, but asking "Why would you still bother with tape" reveals either hubris or ignorance, or both.

Furthermore, the tapes give me a far deeper history than you are likely to have with online backup.

Your disk-to-disk strategy is great for the most common restore request; a user that has inadvertently destroyed her own file. But a worm, virus or logic-bomb may very well wipe out your disk-to-disk strategy, and then where are you?

You can reduce the risk of online backup vulnerability if the host machine uses a different operating system as compared to the OS of the servers being backed up. Also, the shares by which the backup server reads the master files ought to be read-only, so a virus in the backup server cannot infect the primary server.

jdemontjoie,
First of all I would like to mention that a great number out there do not have LANs and/or Servers...
You are certainly right to have a negative opinion of Tape Drives because of your incident but then again I would say that your situation is quite an exception. From experience I have seen that people who back up on HDDs and Tape Drives do definitely have more secure and reliable backups with tapes. Your cheap IDE HDs on your LAN are a good reason to let you down at some time, good HDDs often do, so moreso with cheap HDs. Good Tape Drives may not be cheap nor their media but I am using these AIT1 and AIT2 drives for several years without any hitch at all, so on the long run they work out rather cheap considering the stressless use and reliability they provide. As for installation, I have my Drives take off from a Floppy (Internal or USB) with a firewire aspi1394.sys driver and this is all I need to use my drives on any PC.
Depending on the backup size, I personally can restore a 27GB Disk Image data back onto my 200GB Seagate drive in 35 to 45 minutes (Just enough time to take a good shower before it gets done) with no flaws whatsoever. And finally, in the case of theft, (Even Fort Knox is something of the past nowadays) access to your precious data on a HDD is quite easy to retrieve but not quite so on tapes. This is well worth considering.

Erm...I was talking explicitly about a network with servers. I also have the benefit of a secure area in another building, still connected to the LAN. I appreciate you may want to think differently in a non-LAN environment.

Hard drives, cheap or otherwise, seem to be failing more often these days IMHO. That's why I use the internal hardware RAID - and I can afford to because they're cheap and performance isn't an issue. You could use the software RAID in Windows I suppose. Again, performance isn't an issue here.

I have two production servers which swap data onto RAID arrays. In other words, I can restore from one to the other, from my laptop. To give "offsite" protection, the backup server accepts backup files from the production servers and ironically, I use the parent/child/grandchild form of backups we used to use with tapes. So I also get a history.

All servers are locked away. The backup server is locked in a separate building! So no "precious data" leaves site on tape in the pocket of an employee, presumably a human being, and with all the fallability that that entails.

The benefits:
Instant access to backed up files, from any authorised PC in the building - or outside for that matter
Faster backup/restore times
Data stored on a more secure media
No ongoing staff costs
Disaster Recovery/Offsite backup box ticked, and no data leaves the premises

Risks:
Viral attack internally - mitigatable
Low yield nuclear warhead destroying site - not a lot I can do about that

All the best,

John

Low yield nuclear warhead destroying site - not a lot I can do about that

Well any small business DR plan Can Not Address this type of Thing!

But there are things you should be thinking about Flood so are all your Mission Critical Servers above any possible Flood Levels? Fire what would happen if there was a fire in one of the buildings could it spread to both? Could the fire suppression systems in these buildings render all the hardware unusable after the fire was put out?

If you answer to any one of these questions is No then you really do not have a Valid DR Plan in Place! All that you do have is some means of recovering after a Hardware Failure which is an expected thing to happen but so far you have not addressed any Unexpected but Possible things that can and do happen.

If you are on a coast are you're systems far enough inland to be Tsunami Proof? Do you live in an area that is Earthquake Prone? So what then would happen if the worst was to happen? Is your Hardware sufficiently protected so that you can recover your data and be up and running with all Begged, Stolen or Borrowed Hardware?

Forget about the unlikely which the current Governments push on us to keep us worried and under control and think along the lines of the likely occurrences that are possible now.

If you where to blindly follow the Fear Campaign by the Governments there is no need for any form of DR Plan as you would expect to be dead along with at the very least the entire set of building in the local or even maybe the entire city. While it's possible it's also Highly Unlikely to occur so look at what Nature can throw at you and plan accordingly.

The first thing that I do in forming an DR Plan for any business is to grab a copy of the last Major Flood Levels and then work according to what these levels where and add another 25% as a safety margin so if the business falls within that area they can expect to have a total system loss and the need for Off Site Storage is necessary. According to statistics this will be a Once in a 100 Year Event that last one was now 32 years 6 months ago so while we have a bit of breathing room it's also possible that next week this area will be underwater.

Are the area that you are in Subject to Flash Flooding? if that's the case can you keep water out of your Server Rooms with a total Power Failure? If not WHY? Have any new buildings been put up recently that may adversely affect the way that rain water can flow away during a severe storm that will cause Localised Flooding?

It's totally useless to hold a RAID Array in your hand that's been underwater for even as little as 30 minutes as all the drives will be trash and you'll be paying someone to recover the data and waiting for it as well most likely. This depends on how Localised the flooding was from the rain the more widespread the more HDD that the Data Recovery Houses will have to work with so the longer your wait will be.

Winchester Drives don't take kindly to being submerged so you have to plan according to the limits of your hardware just saying I have a copy in another building close by may not be enough particularly if they are close together and subject to the same events. If you had a mid range Earth Tremor just how stable would the buildings that house this Hardware be?

Have you thought of things like this rather than throw your hands in the air and worry about a Fission Weapon being deployed that will make it all a useless exercise?

Col

Tape drives are still a popular alternative to disc backups, though the latter is still more convenient. It's particularly useful for archiving rarely used files. There's a good comparison over at PickyGuide: http://www.pickyguide.com/computers_and_software/tape_drives_guide.html

Inertia and the fear of failure in migration are the factors that are preventing the migration of tape data to disk.

Operations folks are nowadays tuned to the theory that 'Success or initiative may or may not pay, but failure will ensure a professional debacle'

Considering the mission critical data residing in tape backups, it is sometimes tough for operations managers to present a business case to convert tape backups to disks.

Gary
Sub-editor,
http://www.data-recovery-reviews.com

With ATA over ethernet becoming more popular and SAN and NAS stuff really hitting the corporate market, we'll see the change.

BUT, the infrastructure in some places is so geared towards tape, that it is going to take them a good long time to sort it all out.

ever seen this?
http://www.abacusbackups.com/

That might be the new realm of backups. How long does it take to recover? Is there any lag time when you try to retrieve your backups?

If you have say 100Gigs + it would take forever to restore an entire volume, so they will arrange to ship you a hard drive, preconfigured for your server.

The cool thing is that they allow online recovery too, if you lost one single file or some appended data it can be recovered with ease, whereas not so easy with tape, especially single file recovery such as a simply misplaced/accidentally deleted Word doc. And that's IF your tape actually works, god only knows how many 'successful' tape backups are not really successful as they can't recover some files. It's faster to get it from Abacus than to dig through the server for deleted files and restore it.

I don't use it myself, but have many clients who do and they absolutely LOVE it compared to their old drive or tape backup.

Off Site Storage. At one place we had all the server room covered by 3 floors of water in a flood and the last person out of the room/Floor didn't grab the tapes from the Auto Loader which where the most current and recently performed.

I just cleaned them up and recovered the data from them and they had been underwater for 2 weeks and a few days I'm not exactly sure when they went under. But the recovery procedure for the tape involved removing them from the Auto Loader and dumping them in clean water till I could get around to looking at them. As the Auto Loader enclosure was fairly clean it didn't take much to clean up the tapes and I managed to recover all the data from the last Backup and the Incremental as well. I then dumped the tapes and the new drive just in case of any damage and fitted a new drive for the next load of tapes. It was really cheap insurance but it worked which is the important thing.

All the server room/floor was destroyed and we had to replace everything. If it had not of been for those Tapes I really don't know what we would have done to get them up and running so fast.

Col

I think what this boils down to is:
There is no silver bullet. While we want backups and restoration to be fast and seamless, it is pie in the sky.

I like the idea of Abacus, but I'll a little leary. I also agree that offsite backups (on seperate media) are the way to go as well.

Multiple flavors of backup mean that you will have an easier time later on.

The only reason I don't recommend HD based backup systems are due to Fire and Theft, Tapes still offer a good medium for removing data from sites. Large companies can have sans located in different areas to address this but small companies still must minimize their risks to these threats.

nt

It depends on the size of the company and who's responsible for handling the backup's doesn't it?

I've seen specially made Hot Swap SCSI Drive foam enclosures used to hold office supplies and never used for the job that they where intended for. With a big organisation this can be OK as they have someone responsible for handling the backup who know what they are doing. But with smaller companies that is a different story where the owner generally takes the responsibility for taking care of the backup's and they never know what they are doing. I've seen HDD's dropped onto concrete from a height that was too high for any form of protection, DVD stored in closed cars in our summer which destroys then through excess heat and tape in a bag thrown out of a first story window to be caught by someone on the ground to throw into a car.

Of all these off site storage methods it's always been the tape that survives the mistreatment in getting them off site. Even recently I had to have a HDD recovered and even the cost involved in that wasn't considered as over the top by the person responsible for destroying the drive. Then there is always the problem of what happens if the backup is stolen or lost? With DVD or HDD this data can be read by almost anyone who cares to look but the average person will not have access to the right type of tape drive to read the tapes so from my prospective they are far more secure than anything presently available.

Col

"Then there is always the problem of what happens if the backup is stolen or lost? With DVD or HDD this data can be read by almost anyone who cares to look but the average person will not have access to the right type of tape drive to read the tapes so from my prospective they are far more secure than anything presently available"

That's what I thought you meant earlier which is security through obscurity. With hard drives, you simply implement EFS crypto on the drives and you're done! That's real AES military grade security for you!

As for the padding issue, NO one goes and hands raw drives to someone like Iron Mountain. They won't take it that way. You're suppose to put it inside of a carrying case.

As for the padding issue, NO one goes and hands raw drives to someone like Iron Mountain. They won't take it that way. You're suppose to put it inside of a carrying case.

That is exactly what I used to do when I worked Big Business now I Consult for Small business and it's a totally different story./ I don't handle the backup on a regular basis as the company Owner or designated person performs these and then hands them on mainly to the owner of the business for safe keeping. So anything is possible and more often than not happens.

As I've said previously any Off Site Storage is a hazard at the best of times and depending what it is that you are storing you can be limited here. Things like Medical Records are not the type of thing that you want falling into the wrong hands and even a Encrypted HDD to Military Spec is worthless if the rest of the hardware has been destroyed like say by being submerged for several weeks or the building burnt out. For some strange reason these business want to keep running and be up and working ASAP but at the same time have a Secure Backup provision particularly with Medical, as here there is now Jail time for those responsible for allowing Patient records to escape or be stolen so it depends on if you wish to take the chance and be held accountable for the leak.

I wouldn't call it Security through Obscurity but more Security through the cost of the hardware Auto Loaders are not cheap but are common in business just not in many other places. Even a small business can stretch to a small Auto Loader and Tape Library for secure storage of their backup and these things I've yet to see sold off at the end of the Tax Cycle they just get junked to prevent some young kid to buy one on E-Bay for $10.00 and have access to a lot of possible data.

Here I consult for some Medical Places and while it's not through choice. But because I establish the Security Procedures that should be in place if there is a problem I'm the one facing possible Jail Time for the mistake if it was directly attributable to my mistake. So any easily readable Data Source is a Big NO NO in my books. I've seen the Police crack Military Spec Encryption as they have the resources to do this and I've watched a 15 year old kid do the same thing so I'm not overly confident with Encryption as the Sole Form of Off Site Data Security. Just as with many of my clients who have sensitive Data to protect I'm not happy with Internet Storage no matter how secure they claim to be I remember E-Bay members records being hacked a few years ago and a Bank that I used to work for had the same thing happen to their Credit Card Section. I had to go in and lock down that section after the event as I wasn't in that area.

If my procedures are not followed I'm off the hook but if I recommend the wrong thing and the data gets loose I will face Serious Jail Time so under those conditions what would you chose?

It's very easy to say this is better when you don't have your neck in a noose but it's a different story when you have to carry the can for your decisions and be Legally Responsible for those decisions without the resources of a Big Business to back you up. Even then the CO would be the one to end up in Jail so I don't think that he would willing back me up at his expense. Maybe you would chose to do this but you would be one of the very few willing to accept a 10 year Jail term because one of your employees did the wrong thing which is against company policy.

Col

"Things like Medical Records are not the type of thing that you want falling into the wrong hands and even a Encrypted HDD to Military Spec is worthless if the rest of the hardware has been destroyed like say by being submerged for several weeks or the building burnt out"

Hard drives can be used in any system. The chances of a 10 year old hard drive working in today's systems versus a 10 year old tape working are significantly better. I have 15 year old hard drives that will still work in a modern PC if it uses the IDE spec. Your chances of a 15 year old tape working without the original gear to read it is zero.

"I wouldn't call it Security through Obscurity but more Security through the cost of the hardware Auto Loaders are not cheap but are common in business just not in many other places."

That line of thought is precisely what will land you in trouble. There is no substitute for military grade encryption. If the military trusts their lives with it, I would trust my job with it. What I wouldn't trust is the hope that someone can't read my tape because they can't afford the equipment.

Hard drives can be used in any system. The chances of a 10 year old hard drive working in today's systems versus a 10 year old tape working are significantly better. I have 15 year old hard drives that will still work in a modern PC if it uses the IDE spec. Your chances of a 15 year old tape working without the original gear to read it is zero.

So encryption works for your needs but you have to accept that this doesn't meet everyones needs nor is it feasible that any one solution will meet everyones needs so you use what works best at your individual situation.

Incidentally where at any time did I say anything about using 10 year old Tape Drives? I never use anything over 4 years old and that is only at the very small companies that I do work for most are in the region of up to 2 years old before they are replaced.

Have you tried fitting one of your 15 year old Dos Formatted HDD's to an XP Machine and seen it work there?

But since you are so interested perhaps you would care to contribute here to this discussion.

http://techrepublic.com.com/5208-11189-0.html?forumID=3&threadID=197473&start=0

The military doesn't trust their lives with encription. I know of some military sites that use virtual disks, with snap shot/snap clones and use continuous access to satilite sites. The create snap clones and present it to their backup servers to backup to.. you guessed it.. TAPE.

seriously a 15 year old harddrive, a drive manufactured in 1991 would have how much storage capacity? 10-30mb maybe, what would you have stored on those drives and I doubt that they would still be functional. I'm sure those backup tapes from that era would have performance guarantees of 25-30 years use, I'm sure they would still work, heck the tape drive would have failed before the tapes ever did.

Hearing about a recent story (posted on TR no less) about an FBI laptop being stolen containing millions of veteran's records makes me question what type of storage standard is in use by any government/military dept. Just because the standard exists doesn't mean it's being used by those that created it. These same standards are created and used by human beings, and unfortunately failure to follow through and do the right thing seems to be human nature on a regular basis.

No form of backup is perfect, what's practical for you may not be for others & vice versa. You're way isn't better for everyone, it just works better for you.

"Have you tried fitting one of your 15 year old Dos Formatted HDD's to an XP Machine and seen it work there?"

Yes, that does work. Slower because of the older IDE interface, but it does work and XP does read FAT formats. The point is that when you're dealing with old archived data that have to be around for 7 years, hard drive interfaces are down wards compatible and you don't have to worry about new readers that can't read old tapes.

Have you ever tried restoring off a tape, even when you have the right hardware, that has sat on a shelf for anything more than a couple of years? I have experienced tapes that have suffered from write through and there's not much joy when that happens.

I would rely on being able to read the data off a HDD that has just sat on a shelf for 10 years more than even just a 5 year old tape. Unless you make sure that the tapes that are stored are properly maintained by "using" them periodically (fully winding them through and/or rewriting the stored data - which in turn will wear out the tape in itself), that tape media will become useless and not just through hardware obselesence.

This is so true. I work at a small company with about 50 people. I store current tapes in my house and others at another employee's house that is close to the office. I carry tapes back and forth to work, as needed, everyday, in a tote bag. Tapes older than 60 days are sent offsite to climate controlled storage. Tapes are pretty durable, sometimes its hot in my house.

I have no idea how the other employee treats my backup tapes. She is a trusted employee and I've explained how they should be handled, but I really don't know for sure how they are handled. Still, I've restored many a time from them without a problem.

Tapes are durable and dependable, especially if you do a full backup everynight; small companies have that luxury. For a small company, its a practical solution, except I have enough data tapes to build an addition on my house.

After carrying around tapes in a tote bag for years, I think online backup is the way to go. It eliminates the hassle of storage and transportation. It is also remote. If a disaster should happen and your data is somewhere else, you can have business continuity.

I'm still skeptical of online backup security, but it definitely has promise. I think HDD backups can be good for some things, but I wouldn't give up my tape drive just yet.

But then again I regularly sit in a server room late at night watching the machines transmit terabytes of data to another location within the same bank just so that it's duplicated AU Wide should the worst happen.

It's really Boring as Hell sitting there without anything to do unless something stops working then it gets busy. But where I supervise we get all of the regional transactions sent to here daily and then transmit it all off along with the local stuff to 5 different destination Server Farms that are Company Owned.

Easy money if you like sitting down with nothing to do most of the time but it's neither fast or interesting.

For my smaller clients Tape is defiantly the way to go and I've yet to have a problem recovering Data off a Tape which gets heavily used. On the other hand I've seen very small companies spend upward of 5K to recover the data off a dead HDD that was their only means of Backup and then at another company a bunch of DVD R's forgotten about and left in a car for a day during our summer. When they where picked up they where only good as drink coasters but the tape that was left in the same place worked perfectly. It's not the fastest method available but so far it's been the most reliable method available for my needs.

Col

Time consuming and you still must rely on a solid backup and waiting for the verification. HOPEFULLY that data can be restored if needed.

at every step (except restoring, which is hundreds of times faster).

Here's our basic procedure described in another thread.

http://techrepublic.com.com/5208-11189-0.html?forumID=3&threadID=197473&messageID=2058195

or http://tinyurl.com/z5uco

That's a good read and probably much needed in today's IT world! Excellent post

I can see where many cases would be unique. Obviously ANYTHING to do with networks will be unique based on the company, what works for one may not work for another (or be as resourceful).

Abacus would be more focused toward the small business and especially retail and hospitality fields. These generally require one person to swap tapes and manage backups that really is not an IT person. Often these company's/stores will only have IT staff in when absolutely needed, the rest is up to the staff.

In such a case, the backups are often forgotten, tapes are often mishandled, drives are not routinely cleaned, nobody knows HOW to recover files etc. Staff is also paid to do this as overtime work, what about tape verification?

In cases such as law firms, accountants offices, consultants, HOME based busiensses even, this is an immense time and effort savings for them.

Major grocery chains in Canada will use this system as it is foolproof and reliable. It save them money in hardware, time, security and staff wages etc.

Small Businesses rely upon employees who aren't IT. They do forget to change tapes, clean the tape drive. My previous post about people dropping drives is in direct relation to this. Having a non IT personal pull out a hot swap drive isn't the same thing as swapping tapes.

NAS is a great idea. The Hot Swap NAS if a large business is a great idea.

Small Businesses need something that is easy for a non IT person to do, backs everything up, is portable, reliable and inexpensive. Also can withstand being bounced around bit.

"Small Businesses need something that is easy for a non IT person to do, backs everything up, is portable, reliable and inexpensive. Also can withstand being bounced around bit."

Automatically backed up each night with no user intervention. NOTHING to drop, lose, break, forget, smoke...automatic,online, scheduled and performed by trained and capable backup specialists and out of your hands.

It has it's place.

Especially for businesses without an IT person. The only thing I don't like about it is that someone else has control of my data. Every time I hear about data being stolen or mishandled by trusted partners, I hug my tape backup ever harder.

Though I am paranoid about backups, I still think this solution is a great idea. One reason is because of 9/11. I think it really changed my opinion about what a backup should be. It has to be more remote than what I can currently do.

I have backup tapes at my house or a storage facility all within 50 miles. Maybe that isn't good enough anymore considering how the world is today.

Localised event but for something bigger it's no where near far enough for anything but a small business.

You also don't need human intervention either Mother Nature is more than happy to wreak havoc as often as it likes. I proposed a large Earthquake centred close to a major population centre would be catastrophic to that population centre and the infrastructure supporting it. Something as simple as an earthquake and a dam within a couple of hundred miles of the city could be a total disaster particularly if the dam was to go during the earthquake or shortly afterwards.

You could also have an earthquake underwater and then you only have a few hours at best to remove everything from the path of the resulting Tsunami which could decimate an entire coast line and like the Boxing Day one a year or so ago would just wash over any small islands in its path.

Then you can have Human Error like at the 3 Mile Island incident which turned out OK but if it hadn't of then there would have been a major problem in the surrounding area.

Currently the Governments have us all focused on Terror Attacks so most of us have forgotten about Natural Disasters or Acts of God. Any of these events are far more likely than a terrorist attack.

Here it really depends on how far away things need to be in the event of some major incident occurring and how big the business actually is as if everyone where killed or injured during one of the above events about the only interested party that would be left is the Tax Man who would want the necessary forms filled out and it wouldn't matter if everyone had died the paper work still needs to be done.

Col

He is a survivor for sure. True, governments are more focused on terrorism. I am, because I work about 15 miles from New York City and got to experience how far reaching the effects of 9/11 could be felt from a business continuity point of view.

We had no phone service except for cell phone. The lines were all jammed. The internet was so slow for days, it was almost unusable. Everyone was online looking for information. An online restore would have failed or been too slow if you needed to do it immediately.

Lots of New York City companies close to the attack had to start over with loaner equipment or buy new equipment. If they didn't have a good backup plan, they would have lost everything.

I think it all depends on where you live, but no matter what disaster you get hit with, it might be a good to have a far offsite backup in addition, of course, to tape.

In such situations as a crippled internet or where a lot of data is to be restored,they send you a preconfigured hard drive with your data on it.

In such situations as a crippled internet or where a lot of data is to be restored,they send you a preconfigured hard drive with your data on it.

That is an excellent feature for sure if there is a disaster and online isn't possible. I think an online service has an edge over in-house hard disk or tape because it offers remote data storage. I would use that in conjunction with my tapes, so I know my data will be around even if I don't make it

I still can't give up my tapes, though. They continue to save the day, even if they take alot of abuse.

AV

That comparison is made with a library with low tape density, at actual market.
If You compare for example a SpectraLogic Tape Library T50 with 50 LTO3 tapes and 2 drives in 4U rack format, You will discover that for a medium company or a department is still cheaper tape use.
Moreover do not forget that most companies and offices would need to mantain many copies of their backup (usually one or two weeks of history plus some last of the month copies).

Don't forget that it would be easier to take a few tapes home for off-site security/disaster recovery than a PC full of hard disks. Yes, you could put them in removable trays, but I wouldn't feel comfortable with hard disks bouncing around in my car.

I think tape are becoming obsolete, but so should people running Win98 or using CDROMs, why not just DVDs?

I think disk-based backups are probably better for larger organizations but a little harder for smaller sites. I think disk-based backups are overall better but you have the issue of storage and how durable it is when you transport it. Most smaller businesses don't take their backup tapes to a secure site, they take it home.

Tapes backups will be around as long as small biz imho.

The only caveat here is offsite storage. Hard drives for backup are IDEAL if you have two facilities and spance to house them. Remember that much of the cost in comercial venues is floor space. A DRP should include some type of offsite backup. While your ideas are solid, there may be some ramping up to do. Making the hard drives portable is a must.

When tapes are sent off site, they are usually picked up by some type of service for larger companies and employees by smaller ones. Have you seen the abuse these items take in the truck?

Until you can safely drop a hard drive from 4 feet onto the ground, tapes will still exist.

The biggest problem we are going to be facing is the small company, i.e., less than 15 people with over a terabye of information. How do they manage that? Disk, sure, but who want to haul a terabyte brick around daily. Tapes make an easier solution for now.

Keep an eye on chip drives, as they quickly gain in size.

Just my thoughts.

People are already using hard drives for backup today and they hand them to companies like Iron Moutain.

For a small business where you have to carry the data home, carrying to hard drives in a padded container isn't difficult.

Reasonable prices too.

http://www.fieldtexcases.com/blow-molded-cases.html

This is very useful. I'll add it to the blog with credit to you. Thanks.

Forget padding, they just die. ATA/SATA drive mfr's do not even
give a MTBF; it's too embrrassing. They only estimate the number
that might be returned to the factory, and that is something like 1
to 2 percent. So do you want to do backups with drives that might
croak 2+ percent of the time?

What ever happened to that ragged old idea of having generations of backup media? The cost analysis of the hard drive-based system only has two generations of backup. If one needs or wants more than a couple, then the cost advantage of hard drives drops because tapes are a lot less expensive: the tapes cited are 47% the cost of the hard drives. With the ever-increasing compliance issues, generations of backups can become more and more important.

Another point that's ignored in the article is the overhead labor of swapping hard drives, regardless of whether they are hot-swapable or not, as soon as you want to send your backup media off site when you need more generations than you can pack into that server chassis. Tape and tape drives are designed to be swapped a lot. The process is simple and does not require opening the machine. On the other hand, hard drives, are swappabel in the same sense that a mobile home is mobile - it can be moved, but you don't want to make a habit of it.

If the drives are internal, as the article seems to envision, you have to monkey around with in a running machine or shut it down. If the drives are in removable bays, you most likely don't plug the drive directly into the bay - it's in some sort of carrier. Either you buy lots of carriers (and drive up your cost per drive) or you take the time to swap the hard drives out of the carriers at each generation.

That said, without a doubt, hard drive back up is far faster than tape and there are all manner of reason why having the last couple of generations online is really handy. However, I think those drives should be considered staging areas for the data to be transferred to tape, not the "end" product of the backup.

You should also check out Data Deposit Box for online data backup . It's inexpensive and very easy to use. It takes about 2 minutes to install the online backup agent. Once installed it's fully automatic with nothing to remember and no procedures to follow. You can access your online data storage easily with a web browser.

And what do the Online Backup Services use for backup? And how
long do they keep it?

A DS3 45 mbps pipe is more than $10K a month yet it's 1/2 the speed of regular Fast Ethernet and 1/20th the speed of Gigabit Ethernet. The service also isn't cheap and the bandwidth is even more expensive.

I didn't have time to read every post, I just skimmed through the titles and read a few posts, so it might have been mentioned already but other than one post I saw regarding storing tape "generations" I didn't see the main reason why our firm still must use tape-- The data we backup must be kept for many years.

I work for a money management firm and the SEC does not take kindly these days if you can't provide a data (paper) trail should questions about improprieties arise. We use AIT so storage costs are minimal and pulling data for an SEC or internal audit from our archives usually isn't a problem.

Thanks for a concise post that nails the issue I asked about. I know of no better way to capture a large backup and keep it for years than to write a tape.

Many people have posted that tapes are fragile and unreliable. I'd be interested to know if you have encountered trouble on this score, and what you do about it.

We've run into no problems yet. We've recently switched from good ol? DLT to the newer AIT so I couldn?t tell you what kind of lifespan we?ll be getting. Auditors don't usually ask for tapes older than the last audit but we keep them just incase. I'm not sure what the legal length of time required is but I've restored files from DLT tapes that are several years old with no problems.

Our offices encompass a former bank building and we use the concrete/steel vault for our archive tape library with the tapes stored in fire safes inside that. It is very safe and secure vs. fire, flood, theft, weather, etc.

Handling tapes with care, storing them in their protective cases in a cool dry, dark environment will keep them nice and safe for many years to come.

What we do about any problems with the archives is hope we can use another set from just before or after the date requested. While replication takes care of most of the immediate needs, if a tape goes bad they may be right, you may be SOL. But this as far as my experiences go is few and far between.