Tape Backup Systems Are Obsolete!
Remember the days when we used tapes (cassettes, VHS) as our preferred media? In the mid-nineties we moved to CDs and DVDs. Today we are moving into the real digital age with MP3, MP4, MPEG, video streaming, etc. - all digitized, stored and accessed from flash, RAM and hard drives.
Let me remind you what is wrong with tape backup:
- It’s slow (recording, rotating, etc.)
- Quality is relatively low
- It’s not reliable (how many of your tapes fell apart or got lost?)
Proponents of tape backup systems try to address these inherent problems by offering engineering work-arounds, but there’s little they can do for issues like data restoration capabilities and slow recovery windows.
So here is the question: If you already moved your personal media files away from tapes into the digital age and are now synching your iPod with your laptop (e.g. disk-to-disk backup), why on earth would you treat your critical data/data center any differently?
Today as RAID storage is becoming more and more affordable, drive capacities are rapidly increasing (1TB per drive!!) and other factors continue to drive the shift to disk-to-disk architecture (auto MAID, replication / data recovery, WORM), I really can’t think of any good reasons to use tape backup systems any more.
If you think of any reasons, I’ll be very happy if you can share them with me!