TechRadar is part of Future US Inc, an international media group and leading digital publisher. Tapes are also making a big comeback because they're easier to store. Unfortunately, some business owners, IT administrators, and industry experts do not fully understand all the benefits that come with using tape. In addition to poorly advertising its improvements, Moore said tape vendors turned inexplicably shy about publicizing their new products. Your California Privacy Rights / Privacy Policy. "From [a service-level agreement] standpoint, as far as [recovery point and recovery time objectives] expectations go, tape will not meet that requirement.". Considering the tape backup advantages we have just listed, it is clear why tape storage has managed to do so. Learn the latest from upcoming events to stocks, financials and more. Sign up to the TechRadar Pro newsletter to get all the top news, opinion, features and guidance your business needs to succeed! Moreover, interest in the tape backup technology has greatly increased in recent years. Tape Backup: Is It Still Necessary & What are its Advantages [MiniTool Tips] By Helen | Follow | Last Updated April 27, 2022 This essay published by MiniTool official will tell you why there are still many users who choose to back up to magnetic tape storages. But no matter what new technologies, regulations, or standards come into play in the future, cloud providers can adapt to meet the most best practices. Businesses that combine these two options can reap better returns on their backup investments. Tapes are mostly used together with hard drives or cloud drives, so users can enjoy the advantages of both kinds of storage devices. Due to their longevity and portability, tape devices can store large amounts of data offline and ensure long-term archival stability. Vendors aren't proactive in explaining the benefits of tape backup or dispelling myths about its drawbacks. Tapes are reliable, secure and cost-effective: Reliable. And when it does, it's usually when people assert how "not dead" it is. We cannot see what new type of cybercrime is waiting around the corner. "The newest tape technologies have a better bit error rate than disk, indicating that they can transfer more data than disk before encountering a permanent error," she said. Because tapes stay in the library, tape handling is no longer an issue, meaning that it is less likely the media will be damaged as a result of handling. If a tape gets damaged, you will not be able to retrieve the data it contains. Enable data encryption to protect your data from unauthorized access. Are tape backups still used? As the saying goes, there is nothing new under the sun. This means organizations bear new financial and resource costs every time they update their tape technology. Tapes are reliable media for storing data and moving them off-site for disaster recovery. As more data moves to the cloud, the cloud providers themselves need to offer competitive low-cost storage. As you know, they're still used today in a variety of capacities. Repairs 4k, 8k corrupted, broken, or unplayable video files. Their efforts aim to prevent Service providers express optimism despite the continuing economic uncertainty, looking to emerging technologies and services All Rights Reserved, Use the Lyve Cloud portal to configure and manage your object storage and services. Such falsehoods have negatively affected tapes reputation as a reliable backup medium. If maintained properly, tape drives can store required data for 30 years or even more. Looking for Help documentation on Lyve Cloud or need support? Because they arent a part of an online system that you dont control. Magnetic tapes can provide large storage capacities, and the capacities of modern tapes are growing in order to meet the increasing needs. By 2021 only 4% still use tape as their only backup method and the use of cloud and online backups has increased to 51%. As a kind of offline storage drive, tapes are separate from any host devices. Tape enables hyperscale: The big cloud providers rely on tape for high-volume, low-cost . Scaling down is similarly complicated, given the time and resources required to decommission physical space, disks, and network equipment. Plus you get to keep all of your data securely within the walls of your own business, giving you an edge against nosey hackers or governments. Additionally, they portrayed cloud backup as the foolproof and hacker-proof option. Consider that the first LTO generation . Just as what you can think about, there are many advantages for backing up to tapes rather than to other common storage devices. "This may come in useful for companies facing challenges of Article 32 of the GDPR guidelines," she said. A large business can replicate its critical data and back it up on tapes. Are Tape Backups Still Relevant? - SEP The role of tape in the modern IT infrastructure has drastically changed over time. Businesses are also discovering that the cost argument is nothing compared with tapes overall benefits. New technologies make venerable tape storage tech a smart choice for off-site backups and data archiving. Request a live demo by one of our engineers, See the full list of features, editions and prices, A Step-by-Step Guide to Setting Up Office 365 AD Sync, Magnetic Tape Backup Advantages and Disadvantages, High capacity and longevity perfect for the long-term retention of large files, Portability and compact size suitable for transporting data from one system to another, Compliant storage for highly regulated industries where data integrity and security are essential, Ransomware-resilient ultimate offline (air-gapped) storage medium that is not connected to any network that might be exposed to malware or ransomware, Efficient in terms of power consumption and heat production allows for significant energy costs reduction. Supported OS, Hypervisors, Databases, Applications. Tape backups are stored offline, meaning that the tape storage device gets disconnected from the system once the backup operation is complete. Tape backups are still in use in a wide range of organizations. "By 2005, tape had surpassed disk in reliability, with faster data rates, higher capacity, lower total cost of ownership -- that's the good news. Second, someone needs to be physically present to label new tapes, troubleshoot issues, perform maintenance, and organize the tapes. Tape storage solutions still have a purposes and can be useful for small and medium businesses. DOWNLOAD FREE TRIAL, Try NAKIVOs Solution for Free to Deliver BaaS and DRaaS. "There's not enough coverage of tape in the world, and part of it is because other technologies are doing a much better job marketing," said Paul Luppino, director of product management at Iron Mountain, summing up why some people still believe tape is dying or dead. Its also fairly common knowledge that magnetic tapes are hardier than the flimsy mechanical internals of a hard disk drive. By 2021 only 4% still use tape as their only backup method and the use of cloud and online backups has increased to 51%. Even though some tape cartridges can last up to thirty years, their state may significantly deteriorate without proper care and maintenance. Hard disk failures of external drives and RAID systems. Cloud-to-cloud backups give your business affordable access to multiple off-site backups. Wise organizations know that data should exist in several locations on different storage technologies to ensure security, high recovery rates, and overall data confidence. Some companies may decide to complement an existing tape-based data storage strategy with cloud-based storage, and there are many reasons to go that route. The Vanishing Backup Window, Scale-Out vs. Scale-Up: Why Backup Storage Architecture Matters. Tape Backup: Is It Still Necessary & What are its Advantages Everything people see now has been here before, and the cycle continues. Batch convert video/audio files between 1000+ formats at lightning speed. It has a life expectancy of up to 30 years, more than enough for most regulatory archiving requirements. Thus, if the tape cartridge is not connected to the system, attackers cannot get hold of data and corrupt it. The Trouble With Tape Backup - Datto Tape is widely used by large enterprises as offline backup storage. What is Tape Backup? Definition from SearchDataBackup - TechTarget DISCOVER SOLUTION, Backup Copy to Tape for Long-Term Archival with NAKIVO. Quick, easy solution for media file disaster recovery. Most businesses that embrace tapes have also realized their scalable nature. To protect against theft and local conditions, especially disasters such as flood, fire, and other natural disasters, one of those copies should be off-site. First and foremost, tape vendors are working on increasing tape storage capacity. As a result, you can not only protect the most critical copies of your data, but also secure them from internal or external attackers. Tape backup might have made sense in the past, but cloud offers much more flexibility for the present and future. How to Restore Files from Tape Veeam Backup - XpertsTec This is odd considering that tape is still widely used in modern data centers for storing large amounts of data. NAKIVO Backup & Replication recognizes the importance of tape backup for modern data centers. Without tape-based backup automation, when an organization needs to recover data because of a major event or disaster, it will have to request the tapes from the off-site storage location. On the downside, keeping pace with tape drive innovation can be a headache. A tape drive is one of the oldest data storage devices which allows for reading and writing data on a magnetic tape. Further, all major independent software vendor apps allow for universal support for tape-based data backup. You can easily scale the tape backup infrastructure through buying new tape drives and adding them to the tape library. Why are tape backups still used? - ProfoundTips The NAKIVO solution includes native backup to tape functionality. Backup Copy to Tape for Long-Term Archival with NAKIVO Storage capacity of the modern tape medium is constantly being increased in order to meet growing data demands. With this feature, you can copy both full and incremental backups to tape for long-term retention. With the abundant amount of features available in the backup, disaster recovery, and business continuity market, it's hard to believe tape is still being used as a backup option. Trust me, Im not. Other popular misconceptions about tape and backup to tape include poor performance, low capacity, and lack of scalability. Maintaining multiple backups is another form of security: if one copy is corrupted, another copy (especially one in another location) can be used to restore the system. What is the main disadvantage of tape storage as a backup? As for frequently accessed data, it should be readily backed up and recovered on demand. When you are looking at backup strategies, reliability will be one of your most important considerations. Repair corrupt Outlook PST files & recover all mail items. On the other hand, if you want to grow the capacity of disk-based storage, you will have to buy additional hardware, which can be quite expensive. For a start, its not easy to migrate away from tape. Besides being designed specifically for critical data backup, some benefits of tape backup include: Although it is considered an antiquated method, with the rise of ransomware, tape should still be considered a valid tool to have in your belt because it can provide a cold backup offsite that will protect your data if your system is breached. In 2000 Peter combined his skills in application development with his love of sailing to set up his own company building ship monitoring and harbour management software, integrating Search and Rescue using G.P.S. Once the backup is done, you can disconnect them from the machine and take them anywhere. "This would be like Ford Motors bringing out 2019 cars and not telling anybody.". Tape backups are also stable technologies with decades behind their development. Tapes have been used for data storage early since the 1950s. We expect tape to continue to be the lowest cost storage option for some time. The role of tape storage in 2021 and beyond - Continuity Central With this functionality, you can divide tape into two partitions. The advantages of tape backup make it a very attractive backup storage option for organizations. Low price is the second advantage of magnetic tape drives. For this purpose, variousdata backup strategies can be used, including backup to tape, disk backup, or cloud backup. Also, tape cartridges and cassettes can deteriorate over time if kept in unfavorable conditions, resulting in unwanted data loss. If you have Googled tape backup, you might have noticed that most articles only focus on whether tape is, in fact, dead or not. They are cost effective. Get NAKIVOs free trial version for MSPs for 15 days to deliver BaaS, DRaaS and other data protection services. Storage industry experts maintain tape backup remains one of the most reliable and cheapest ways to retain data, and it's the best way to store a golden copy of data safe from malware. But another opinion has emerged that places the blame on the tape backup vendors themselves: They simply aren't doing enough to educate customers about their products' benefits. Repair corrupted images of different formats in one go. Select a reliable data protection solution capable of performing tape backups and protecting the entire infrastructure. 15 days for free. When you reading tape backup, you may think about back up the data in a tape or back up data somewhere else to tape. Tape-based backup is also highly flexible. ), USB flash drive, SD cards, floppy disks, CDs/DVDs, and so on, tapes still have many advantages over the other storage devices. The constant need to upgrade infrastructure and maintain aging media creates recurring and increasing costs, even as the cost of the cloudmany cloud services continues to drop.. Award-winning disk management utility tool for everyone. Simplify backup administration, improve cost-efficiency and ensure data compliance with native backup copy to tape. Storing and retrieving data from tape storage systems is slow. External Drive Or NAS, Which Is Better For You. IBM, Hewlett Packard Enterprise and other vendors who have tape products concentrate more on selling disk, and even more nowadays on flash storage. Peter Groucutt is the managing director or Databarracks. Customers simply lack information about the newest tape features and capabilities. Once again pointing to tape's offline capabilities, Luppino said Iron Mountain has seen an uptick of customers wanting to use tape backup to store golden, immutable copies of their data. The best approach is to offload it to a tape archive. by SEP Blog Team | Backup Strategy , Disaster Recovery , Data Protection , Tape Backup Tapes have been around for almost a century and, although they have seen many different uses, today they are primarily used by companies for enterprise backup. Future US, Inc. Full 7th Floor, 130 West 42nd Street, MiniTool Affiliate Program provides channel owners an efficient and absolutely free way to promote MiniTool Products to their subscribers & readers and earn up to 70% commissions. Modern tapes are backward compatible. This way, you dont have to take the burden of building a separate backup facility and purchasing additional equipment to maintain tape backups. Hardware failures of backup servers such as NAS or SAN systems. Successful data backup requires longevity because, after all, you back up all your data to access it for future use. However, if youre among those looking into tape versus cloud backup, consider these five benefits of replacing your legacy tape backup systems with modern cloud storage. The poll asked 70 enterprises and 30 midmarket companies in North America how much of their backup data was stored on disk, tape or cloud over a two-year period, as well as projections on how much they'll invest in those media in the next two years. Tape data storage industry tackles challenges, Users dish on ransomware protection, recovery at VeeamON, 10 game-changing disaster recovery trends, 20-year evolution of Everbridge critical event management, Infinidat goes hybrid, adds cyber detection, NetApp rolls out new ASA block storage, recovery guarantee, Dell finds storage Apex of Project Alpine, Startup partnerships play bigger role in challenging market, 4 key ways partners sharpen digital transformation strategy, Partner ecosystem upbeat on market prospects, generative AI, Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information. Anyone who has used a PC is familiar with the concept of a hard disk. Another tape backup advantage worth mentioning is scalability. There are several reasons why. When cloud backup services were introduced, the high cost of disk storage and bandwidth made the service too expensive for most. George Crump, chief steward at analyst firm Storage Switzerland, said another reason companies don't adopt tape is many IT administrators are not familiar with it. No credit card required. Moreover, tape offers offline storage capabilities, ensuring that your backups are securely protected against ransomware attacks. Storage industry experts maintain tape backup remains one of the most reliable and cheapest ways to retain data, and it's the best way to store a golden copy of data safe from malware. Why tape-based backup is making a comeback | TechTarget Accelerate geophysical data delivery with storage thats built for the edge. Around 35% of the small businesses surveyed relied on tape to secure their backups, with slightly more using tape to back up their most sensitive data. Longevity of tapes is the main reason why tape backups are still widely used by large enterprises. Vendors of tape backup systems need to work hard on debunking falsehoods surrounding tape technology and better advertise the merits of their products. They cannot "crash". Tape backups are currently used as secondary backups for long-term offsite storage of critical data that doesn't need to be accessed on a regular basis. 7 Tape Backup Advantages You Should Know About - NAKIVO That seems a long way from dead to us. No matter which thought you have, you are not wrong. In a disaster recovery scenario, it is often faster to physically transport tapes containing backup data in a truck than to download multiple petabytes (PB) from a cloud. In the past, blame for the "tape is dead" falsehood had been placed on disk backup vendors with a vested interest in killing the competition or on journalists focusing their coverage on newer technology. Tape backups are still a reliable option for data backup and restoration, and Veeam Backup is a popular tape backup solution that provides a comprehensive backup and recovery solution for virtual, physical, and cloud-based environments. While they are no longer the main backup technology used by companies, tapes can still play a part in the storage process by serving as an additional backup. Spectra Logic's BlackPearl product converges tape, disk and cloud storage on one appliance. Keep your tape cartridges in their boxes when not in use. Moreover, transferring data to new off-site locations requires higher bandwidth all at another cost. Moving tape backup to the cloud seems almost inevitable, but is it the right choice for your business? "Typically, where you'll find that is on tape.". Thus, you could be stranded whenever you move to remote areas. Recent trends in AI, ransomware and data regulations have a major impact on disaster recovery teams. Tape is difficult and slow to eliminate completely due to the years of historic backups you need to keep. Even though their popularity has fluctuated over the years, tapes remain relevant in modern data centers. Longevity. "Tapes can be configured as WORM [write-once, read-many], with only a minimal additional cost per tape, to ensure data once written cannot be tampered with or modified," LaChapelle added. "The high-density cloud storage that you buy might actually be stored on tape.". Data is backed up to tape, which are often stored off-site to use in the event of data loss. Plus, the transfer takes time, and its efficiency depends on signal strength. For instance, tapes are less prone to errors than disks. Zero feature or capacity limitations. Tape Data Restoration and Recovery: What to Do if a Tape Backup Fails This rule works as follows: have three copies of data, store them on two types of media, and keep one of them offsite. North America, Canada, Unit 170 - 422, Richards Street, Vancouver, British Columbia, V6B 2Z4, Asia, Hong Kong, Suite 820,8/F., Ocean Centre, Harbour City, 5 Canton Road, Tsim Sha Tsui, Kowloon. Magnetic tape is a type of sequential storage, which means that you can only access target data in a predetermined sequence. The latest tape drives provide a secure and cost-efficient storage infrastructure for a backup or archive platform, said Mark Hill, program director of tape development at IBM. ", Crump said there's an education gap that tape vendors are not addressing. This is where tape is king. The tape has not ceased to exist for a number of reasons: unique features and capabilities, continuous development, and time-proven performance. While tape is valuable for archiving large data stores for long-term retention, even tape advocates admit disk is better for backing up and restoring data you want to access frequently or quickly. "Tape-based solutions can potentially require manual intervention -- tape packing, shipping and manual reentry into automated libraries," LaChapelle noted. Cloud backups make distributing your backups and following the 3-2-1 rule far easier. Tape vendors continue to improve the core technology and add services revolving around it. However, tapes offer the same benefit, since they give you a hacker- and ransomware-proof option. And having on-site backups means not having to worry about the current network or internet speed or availability.. Browse our Lyve Cloud support articles. Privacy Policy However, you need to clearly understand when and how tape backups should be used in order to achieve the best results. Tape drives have been used for data storage since the 1950s. Instead, the administrative and business costs they incur are necessary because they are affordable in the long term. Explore Lyve Cloud now! "If you've never seen a tape before, it might take you all day to unbox it. In many cases the cost is far greater than the price tag of implementing a robust data protection plan. Tape backup is the practice of periodically copying data from a primary storage device to a tape cartridge so the data can be recovered if there is a hard disk crash or failure. Tape-based storage devices no matter how outdated they seem allow having a cold, hard version of your data at hand, saving you from all kinds of global emergencies. people will tell you aren't backups include cloud computing, a single backup copy, a backup you can't restore promptly when you need to, file synchronization services like . "While the cost per gigabyte on a monthly basis is attractive, the cost to retrieve data from the cloud is something you'll need to factor in," Salazar said. Do you still use Tape? - Data Storage - Spiceworks Community However, this benefit is also available in most modern tapes that allow you to scale up and down depending on your changing storage needs. And theyre immune to some of the most lethal attacks that could cripple disks, such as viruses. First up is speed. Keeping your data on tape allows you to build ransomware-proof storage for a fraction of the price. Only when doing the tape backup process, can they be connected to another machine. Those that arent considering replacing the technology may be taking an if it isnt broken, dont fix it approach. Besides, as a kind of offline storage, you need less money to support and maintain tapes than those online storage devices, much more expensive for cloud storage. Yes, magnetic tape backups are still used at many organizations usually not for primary storage, but as archival storage and as part of a backup strategy. There are many causes of data loss. For example, for the purpose of reading or writing digital data onto a tape, you should use a tape drive. On the storage front, advertisements lead some business owners to believe that the cloud provides immense storage capacity. But we still dont think that means tapes will stop being used any time soon. Because little of his organization's data needed to sit in storage for long periods of time, it was more cost-effective to eject tape from the storage infrastructure completely. Long used as a lower cost, reliable, and secure option for storing cold data (not commonly accessed or used regularly), backup tape storage is still a part . Cookie Preferences Tape backup isn't dead, but it rarely makes headlines. Another point worth mentioning is that tape remains stable throughout its development. "If a massive restore is required due to disaster recovery or some other reason, additional tape drives can be added in order to read more tape cartridges in parallel," Hill said. Tape's portability is also unique to the medium, as it's much easier to move tapes around than disk drives. Keep the record of existing tapes to know exactly where the required information is stored. Part of: Tape backup today Why tape-based backup is making a comeback New technologies make venerable tape storage tech a smart choice for off-site backups and data archiving. There are a few reasons why tape is an important part of the modern data centre: First, tape is by far the lowest cost medium for storing data. Tapes have been around for almost a century and, although they have seen many different uses, today they are primarily used by companies for enterprise backup. As tape drive technology evolves, format compatibility occasionally falls by the wayside. Tapes offline capabilities make it an indispensable storage medium in the age of advanced cybersecurity threats. How Tape Backup Software Works and Why to Use It - NAKIVO Also in the tape backup vs cloud discussion is media failure, a major concern for tape storage. Below, find out 12 reasons for tape technologys relentless survival and comeback. Large capacity is the most advanced feature of tapes. Tape backups are currently used as secondary backups for long-term offsite storage of critical data that doesnt need to be accessed on a regular basis. : one on HDD, one on tape), and at least 1 copy that is offline and offsite. Benefits of Tape Backup/Archive. Yes, magnetic tape backups are still used at many organizations usually not for primary storage, but as archival storage and as part of a backup strategy. In the past, tape backup had gained a bad reputation of being cumbersome and unreliable. 12 reasons tape-based data backup is making a comeback - USA TODAY
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