Moving away from backup to tapes

V

VeeDubbs

Limp Gawd
Joined
Dec 9, 2005
Messages
398
Hi All -

Is there a movement of admins moving away from backing up to tape nowadays? We had a discussion about it today at work, and it seems to make sense to me. We currently have a 250MB pipe to the Internet -- soon to be 500MB; so, bandwidth isn't an issue as much as it used to be, which would allow for us to send/retrieve our backups from an off-site DR site.

Thanks!
 
Yeah...that movement is old already. I've sold/installed quite a few servers for clients over the past...,<whatever> years...and I don't think I've had an old fashioned tape drive in one in the past 5 years...been removable disk of some for or another. Over the past couple of years more and more offsite backup, and NAS for those full nightly image backups.
 
I've also seen a movement away from tape. Maybe it's coinciding with people having time or money to update their backup process or other methods becoming more affordable. A colleague uses dual layer blue ray DVDs along with with a NAS that mirrors itself with a NAS at a satelitte office.
 
Tapes take FOREVER to seek files. Need to recover one file? Could take a while to get the tape to the right spot. Plus tapes are costly as well as the drives for them and they need to be replaced every couple years. With external drives, they have warranty on them and are a lot to easier to do data recovery on than a tape.
 
SpaceHonkey said:
Some of us still have to use tape for compliance reasons...
Click to expand...

What are you complying with. All of my customers that have had to comply with HIPAA, PCI, ISO, SEC, and even a few government certs (not sure which ones because I wasn't on the project) have been able to get their backup to disk given the OK by the auditors.

Ever since about 2008 when a 2TB drive was finally under $200 we started converting all our customers to a backup drive instead of tape. Most sites we bought 2 drives and rotated them weekly which has worked pretty well for the last 3 years. For other sites we bought 5 drives and rotated them to Iron mountain (one on site permanently, one for each week of the month rotated to iron mountain). And for a 3rd category we had a 2TB drive on site and then backed up to a cloud solution (either our datacenter or something like Mozy).
 
I still use tape backup and no plans to change. Ultrium 3 drives are plenty quick and I can restore files in 5 minutes.

I have a question for those of you moving away from tape. Do you do a monthly archive which is kept indefinitely offsite?
 
We used to back everything to tapes and now it goes to disc with another copy to a different hard drive.

We still have 2 Ultrium 3 drives sitting around collecting dust with stacks of tapes on them.
 
We are planning on moving away from it. We are in process of installing a 50/50 pipe out to the internet getting stuff offsite shouldn't be a problem. My biggest problem right now is forgetting to get the tape and put it in the drive for the night. So the backup to disk happens just fine, but from the disk to the tape fails because I forget.



Hopefully this won't derail this thread too much but what are some of you guys using for backup solutions instead of tape? Software / Appliance / combination of software?
 
C7J0yc3 said:
What are you complying with. All of my customers that have had to comply with HIPAA, PCI, ISO, SEC, and even a few government certs (not sure which ones because I wasn't on the project) have been able to get their backup to disk given the OK by the auditors.

Ever since about 2008 when a 2TB drive was finally under $200 we started converting all our customers to a backup drive instead of tape. Most sites we bought 2 drives and rotated them weekly which has worked pretty well for the last 3 years. For other sites we bought 5 drives and rotated them to Iron mountain (one on site permanently, one for each week of the month rotated to iron mountain). And for a 3rd category we had a 2TB drive on site and then backed up to a cloud solution (either our datacenter or something like Mozy).
Click to expand...

Sometimes its not an issue with the external auditors, but the internal policies that govern records storage and backups.

Records Managers are pretty weird folk. :eek: And from the discussions I've had with a lot of them, they have this deep seeded belief that a hard-drive will just fry or wear out and perpetually screw them over. Of course, mention the idea that tapes more or less do the same thing and they want to strangle you.

In addition to backing up to hard drives. Some form of offline storage should be advised to satisfy the RM people. Blu-ray disc storage is pretty popular now in a lot of organizations compared to tape.

I think the last figure I came across was that a one inch stack of sleeved BDs stores approximately 500GB and costs about $35.00 (depending on the media manufacturer)
 
heh saw this before... Not only it has to do with compliance but with MONEY and support. Some companies that I know are so anal and old school that require you to use tape as a backup solution otherwise they will not provide support for the their products unless you follow their terms. Get with the program! Everything is going to the cloud! haha

Hell if you got a fat pipe just get a amazon s3 and dump your crap there!
 
In large data centers I'm still seeing tapes being used for offsite storage. In some cases everything goes to a NAS then gets written to tape. Then those tapes are moved off site. In some instances I'm seeing data being backed up to offsite locations, but only when the cost for the bandwidth is reasonable. In a lot of remote areas of the country, it still isn't.
 
I run a disk to disk to tape scenario in my environment.

Primary NetApp mirrors to secondary NetApp. Backup software dumps to secondary NetApp. Once a month we backup the secondary NetApp to tape for long term archival.

Tape is just to slow & expensive ($50+ for a cartridge). Depending on your application, a new 2tb hard drive for $70 is seriously competitive or better.
 
-Jess- said:
Sometimes its not an issue with the external auditors, but the internal policies that govern records storage and backups.

Records Managers are pretty weird folk. :eek: And from the discussions I've had with a lot of them, they have this deep seeded belief that a hard-drive will just fry or wear out and perpetually screw them over. Of course, mention the idea that tapes more or less do the same thing and they want to strangle you.

In addition to backing up to hard drives. Some form of offline storage should be advised to satisfy the RM people. Blu-ray disc storage is pretty popular now in a lot of organizations compared to tape.

I think the last figure I came across was that a one inch stack of sleeved BDs stores approximately 500GB and costs about $35.00 (depending on the media manufacturer)
Click to expand...

I am in the same boat here... Internal and external auditors both are requesting that we move to a tape backup, moved off site by Iron Mountain or such. This would be replacing the 2tb externals that are rotated weekly, but it is their money and data...
Thought mine might be a bit different, at least once a year we have to do a complete backup of a certain directory to disc for a 30yr retention policy.
 
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