Discussion on:

Are Tape Backup systems obsolete?

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.